And Death Shall Have No Dominion
by Lessandra
Summary: In an alternate universe where Saren didn't die on the Citadel, one renowned Commander transfers an ex-Spectre to a turian prison. But circumstances force two implacable enemies to work together to stop a threat against the Galaxy only they're aware of.
1. Hear My Truths, and Tell Me Yours

**_A/N:_**_My imagination was overrun by quarian terrorists, and I came up with this crazy story — one of the "what if" AU kind of deals._**  
**

_The "what if" here is: What if Saren didn't die at the end of Mass Effect 1, and as a result of subsequent events Shepard didn't die at the beginning of ME2? How the story would change after that.  
_

_I invite you to find out with me. ;)  
_

* * *

**1. Hear My Truths, and Tell Me Yours**

Today was the day.

Alex has been telling this to herself for almost a week now. An incessant chanting at the back of her mind that is always there as she eats, showers, walks the premises of the ship and thoroughly avoids doing what she set out to accomplish. A flow of bells clinking evenly _Do it, do it,_ like a cuckoo's song, rhythmical and detached. A snakelike hiss of _He's waiting,_ trickling in her brain like poison every time she glances at the monitors of the Holding Cell level. It is making her itch in anxiety, because she knows she ought to get it over with, and irritated beyond measure, because she has no idea what is holding her back.

A week is the longest vacation she has ever taken from her formal duties. If asking for a temporary transfer onto a turian carrier can even be considered a vacation. For Commander Shepard it certainly can. The weeks following the Battle of the Citadel have been hectic: in books there are always weeklong celebrations and unity and joy following a victorious battle, but in reality there was booze and tiredness and blackouts and then it was work, endless work, only _work_, because the Citadel is decimated, littered with the wreckage of geth ships and _**Sovereign**_, and somebody has to clean this whole mess up, drown themselves in the bureaucracy and restoration planning and political shebang. And somehow Alex is now in the loop with those special few that the public looks up to when they need something done. Somehow she is now a part of that "exclusive" circle of poisonous treacherous snakes that don't deserve being looked up to because they don't care squat.

People tiptoeing around her, crowding her for interviews and autographs and story-sharing piss Alex off even more. The whole concept of privilege doesn't sit right with her: she has fought against preferential treatment all her life, and still she's thrown right in the middle of it, feeling like one of the fat-assed jerks on Noveria that think they own the world.

But there has been one particular occasion since their victory when she was happy about it, and flaunted all her achievements shamelessly, growling to the Council the words she had been stifling before, choking on them and not letting them spill: _I saved your sorry asses._ She says it, nails them with it, and then she demands and takes. She rides every turian on the Citadel that has any pull — Quentius, Chellick, the Executor, the Councilor — until she gets what she wants.

And what she wanted was the carrier _Valiant_, and its prisoner.

Some people think that Saren surviving this whole ordeal while so many good men perished is incredibly lucky for him and unfair to the fallen. Alex knows better. She was there.

She witnessed what was supposed to be his last minutes: another heated argument and a sudden spurt just out of the pull of the Reaper's indoctrination — enough to see the failure, the mistake, to cease feeling anything but guilt, shame and regret. Enough to raise his arm and push the gun into his own jaw and pull the trigger, killing the light in those synthetic eyes forever.

Surviving suicide to be put through endless torture — Alex doesn't think it's lucky for him and unfair to others. It's very fair. It is the bloody epitome of retribution.

So when she allows it to herself, into the anger that she constantly feels, into the inextirpable desire to spill his blood all over the hard metal floor _pity_ mixes in. She doesn't find it wrong or soft of her to pity him: he would never want it or accept it. So it's just another insult on her part when she does.

There were also people, _"important"_ sorts of people, who were coming from all over to stare at the Spectre who's gone rogue, insane — Goliath brought down by David. They were questioning him, insulting him, throwing empty words and demanding revenge and recompense. Alex hates them because they have no business doing it — most of them know Saren only on paper and certainly don't know him through a struggle of wills that she has shared with him. And yet they dare.

More than that she hates the fact that she wants to do exactly the same: she wants to go down there and call him a murderer, and ask if he's even remotely guilty, and see if there's even vestigial humanity left in him, or whatever you call it with turians. Because if anyone has the right — it's surely her. Which makes her a big fucking hypocrite, and she hates it, and hates herself, and she hates him even more for making her feel this way.

So every day since the transfer she says to herself she'll do it.

It is day six now, and she still has not.

The voyage on _Valiant_ is the longest trip Alex has took in some time: being the Commander of the _Normandy_ has certainly spoiled her. _Valiant_ is nothing like the sleek bullet of a frigate that her own ship is — this is a behemoth-like carrier, hulking and maladroit, and it slowly creeps through space, even the FTL journey taking longer than it should.

Alex was resolute on saying her piece on the first day of being reassigned when the departure was only in preparations. She was even more ready the next day, when the carrier was set to cast off. Then came the third day as they reached the Widow mass relay and entered the FTL, making their jump to Trebia. The fourth day melted into the fifth, and now the sixth has just begun, with them preparing to exit out of the mass relay of Apien Crest. There they will sail to Palaven and make a politically necessary stop there before continuing on to the darkest turian hole where they are planning on hauling Saren's ass into, thus making it a week-long trip.

Alex knows she should really make good on her promise and talk to him. She is not entirely sure what has kept her from doing it the days before. _Today is the day,_ she repeats to herself, as if saying it enough times will bestow on her the necessary courage.

Raising her head she glances over all the monitors dully: nothing ever happens that is worthy of attention. And she isn't interested in all of the ship — only one room. But nothing happens there either. _Valiant_ is enclosed in a sort of lethargic twilight.

There is always darkness on a turian ship. As if the cruiser is dormant, floating senselessly through the space, even though it is anything but.

There is always silence on a turian ship. Not eerie or unsettling but untroubling. A few bleeps of the VIs here, the clickety-click of the consoles there, but there is no laughter and hardly any chatter.

It is a ship made by predators and soldiers, a slow-moving bullet, a black-hole-like trap. Alex shudders to think how many Alliance starships fell for this illusion of peacefulness and were decimated by the sheer power of their opponents during the First Contact War.

Her eyes find her own greatest opponent alive. The prisoner remains unmoving — not that it's surprising. Ever since stepping foot on the _Valiant_ Saren Arterius hasn't spoken at all. He has stayed in the center of the cell, refusing to eat, and rarely hydrating himself. The only moving Alex has seen him do is drinking and relieving himself — otherwise, he sits right in the middle of his cell, shackled, contemplating an invisible spot on the floor, perfectly still, whether he is awake or asleep.

It has been this way for six days, and Alex has quickly fallen into the dilatory pattern of _Valiant_ routine. There isn't much to do in a security room here. Frankly, Alex doubts that the human ones are much more interesting and why Joker finds spying on the crew so endlessly fascinating will be an eternal mystery to her. On turian ships there are less regulations so there could be steamy encounters to witness, she supposes — except that _Valiant_ is just a carrier; no battles, no immediate danger, and no tension to be relieved in the sense that Garrus has always implied to her is happening frequently on turian vessels. He may have been pulling her chain, of course — Alex has little desire to interrogate her fellow security officers on the subject of turian mating habits. She has given them enough of a shock as it is.

Phrixus and Sovus are those rare types of people (both human and alien) that seem to have lived under a rock their whole life. The first day she came they glared at her darkly, didn't utter a word and sat so upright as if they had a metal rod up their asses, not tearing their eyes from the monitors. (A vast difference from the way they are glancing at them now, as lazily as she is, perfectly relaxed.)

Then, as _Valiant_ was approaching the border of the comm buoy zone that could link the Citadel to them, a call came in over her omni-tool. It was Garrus, seeing her off before the carrier went into FTL: he was worried. The whole idea of her watching over Saren's transportation seemed insane to him. Insane, unworthy, irrational, redundant, and a ton of other words that he tried to persuade her with, but Alex was adamant.

The thing with politicians in a nutshell: they always screw the important stuff up.

And after sacrificing so much for her victory over Saren she was not about to let someone's screw-up allow him to get away unscathed. He deserved whatever the Hierarchy had planned for him. So as soon as the time of the interrogations and medical procedure on the Citadel was over and they began planning his transfer back into turian space, Alex made a decision to allow her crew a prolonged shore leave and see it through personally. She knew she could never sleep peacefully unless she saw with her own two eyes the doors of the prison being closed behind Saren's back and know with an unwavering certainty that he will never ever get out.

Apparently, Garrus didn't think there was much point in doubting the turian military's efficiency and making emotional decisions about this — hence the worry and hence the call.

"You know it's a little bit too late to change my mind, right?" Alex rolled her eyes at him, as his face settled into her omni-tool screen.

"I don't know. We can always hijack Normandy again and call in an intervention," he replied with a deadpan face, then squinted at the monitor, trying to make her out better. "I'm being serious, though, Shepard. I just wanted to wish you luck and tell you, we're all waiting for your return. The _Normandy_ isn't the same without you."

"Well, where am I going to go?" Alex snickered. "Hook up with a turian and go gallivanting about on Palaven? I'll be back before you know it, big guy."

"You better," Garrus grinned slightly. "My rifle's already itching to go shoot some geth."

"Mine's too. I'll race ya." She looked up at the monitors briefly and warned him, "I'm about to go out of coverage, so… Keep an eye on everyone, and take care. I don't want to return and find your face blown in half."

"And I better not wake up and hear about you dying on me on the news," he growled teasingly. The screen cluttered, and the last Alex heard was "See you in a week," or something along the lines, before the video turned into noise.

Shaking her head with an affectionate smirk, she switched the omni-tool off. That was when she became aware of two pair of turian eyes, staring at her in an almost comical state of baffled.

"Something wrong?" she asked tentatively.

"This turian — he's your friend?" the turian on the far right with red markings asked, twisting his head to look at her.

"Yeah," Alex snorted. _That's an understatement of the year._ "We saved the Galaxy together."

"We heard about that," the one on the left admitted — his markings were of lighter blue than Garrus's and formed into a different pattern. "But you can't believe everything you hear."

Alex turned to face both of them and the turians tensed immediately, seemingly on edge. She narrowed her eyes, struck by a sudden suspicion, and leaned back a little: she thought that they were so rigid because they had bad experiences with humans — maybe some First Contact War left-over resentfulness, though they looked too young to have witnessed it, or something equally distressing. But now she considered the other possibility — that they had_** no**_ experiences with humans. Because the way the acted, all tense and upright, certainly seemed to suggest they feared she would be terrified of them. Amusement sparked in her at the thought and a grin spread her lips.

"You can believe that," she nodded towards her omni-tool, and then looked at the security monitor almost ruefully, filled with bitter regret. "I'm the girl who has put this guy down." Then she looked back at the turians, meeting their reserved gazes. "You can call me Alex."

"I'm Phrixus," the one closest to her with light blue markings grunted. "This is Sovus."

"You don't get out much, do you?" she arched an eyebrow, trying to appear less amused.

"We are not far up the chain," Sovus explained. "So we do spend much of our time on Palaven."

"That kinda shows," she whispered furtively. "'Cause you sort of look like you expect me to scream and faint at any shuffling on your part."

Phrixus narrowed his eyes at her, not appreciating her amusement, and looked a little defensive. "We're fierce predators. Our brother told us when it has become known we would be cooped up in here with a human female that you would be terrified we would hurt you, maybe even cry." He shuddered deliberately. "We saw an asari cry once — it was disgusting. Turians do not cry, and most of us can't stand the sight of it."

Sovus nodded his agreement boisterously. "We were on one human colony world once — most people there were scared of us. One child was so scared he hurt my ears by shrieking."

"Well, you do look the fierce predator part," Alexandra schooled her expression. "But I'm not a child, and even on the colony words humans out of teenagehood aren't that dense as to think you will eat them or something. Certainly not Alliance military like myself who work with turians practically on daily basis. Your brother was just making fun of you."

Phrixus growled, clearly promising his brother long painful death inwardly. Alex chuckled — it was kind of cute that all the time she thought they resented her being there they were trying to make sure she wouldn't think they were planning on murdering her.

Hiding a smile at these memories now, Alex flickers her gaze to the security monitor and instantly bolts upright, sporting a metal rod of her own instead of a spine. Something has changed on the Holding Cell level. In the cell. Saren is still sitting in the middle of the room, but apparently his self-induced stasis has come to its end as he is moving his head, looking around the room. And after five days of stonewalling, this one little gesture suddenly terrifies her.

Motionless, she watches Saren move his head counter-clockwise until his dark gaze stops to stare directly into the camera — directly at _**her**_. He couldn't have known — there's no way — and yet there he is, looking straight at her with his soulless synthetic eyes.

Alexandra's legs lift her up without her willing them to, as she shuts off her omni-tool. Phrixus gives her a startled glance: just like everything on _Valiant_, Shepard hasn't been moving around much.

"Be back soon," she mutters and goes up to the door, slamming the "OPEN" button.

Today is definitely _**the day**_.

* * *

She strolls inside the containment area, and the turian on guard tonight jerks his head up warily. Alex tries to lift his name up from her memory — she thinks it's Haron. Her gaze immediately focuses on the cell. It is dark but she sees two eyes glittering her way keenly.

She turns away, trying to appear unruffled.

"Leave," she throws at the guard.

He glares at her and snorts, "Yeah, in your dreams, Shepard."

She swirls around and stares at him furiously, having no patience for games. "It's _**Commander**_ for you. Leave. Now. I doubt he will kill me with his stare." She turns away and walks up to the window calmly. "If he does, you are free to take revenge on me."

The turian growls but complies — she hears him move just outside the door, the mechanism slipping shut behind him with a swoosh. For a long time she doesn't turn her back and watches the spectrum of refracted light encasing the ship like a biotic barrier. There is no sound except for her breathing — she hears nothing from the cell. Finally the silence stretches so long and so thin it seems like it's going to snap with a loud tear, and Alex turns around, remaining by the window, and peers into the depth of the cell.

For a moment the darkness seems impenetrable. Then she sees his unnerving eyes again, trained directly on her, glowing in the dark like cat's. Except, of course, they are nothing like that. They are synthetic and listless, the only feature in him they allowed to keep.

Alex knows that Saren declared the indoctrination was gone with Sovereign, but they didn't want to take chances. Or perhaps they just wanted to put him through that kind of pain and humiliation. Whatever the reason, but they stripped him of all the implants he possessed. The Reaper-induced tech was broken beyond repair with the destruction of its master — it was just useless weight. But he had vital implants in his damaged arm and some in his ribcage plates — and they have been torn out of him too, as if he was a ship and some of his parts were scraped away to be recycled.

As she finally comes closer, into the shadow, her eyes becoming used to the dimness and discerning his frame, Alex sees the destruction up close for the first time. It looks like a plague ate away at him, eroded his body. The skin on his arm sags like a pierced balloon, an empty sack of vellum, where somebody has cut off a muscle. Parts of his jaw have actually been plucked away, like teeth with cavities, and replaced by unrefined plastic prosthesis so he he'd still be able to talk. Alex shudders to imagine how much that must have hurt.

She expected before that this would make him look less monstrous and more turian, but in reality he is even more of a horror show than before. Alex isn't sure if this deformity makes him look more scary, or more pathetic. Perhaps, a little bit of both.

"I was starting to doubt you'll ever show," he says finally, his metallic voice loud and startling in the prolonged silence.

"Have I been expected then?" she retorts automatically and is glad that it sounds cheeky enough.

"A hero always comes to the dragon's lair," he sneers, and Alex half-expects to see smoke come out of his nostrils, or flame to burst out of his open mouth.

"But the dragon lies there defeated by her hand already," she arches an eyebrow challengingly. His expression doesn't change. He ought to have been amused before, judging by his words, but he was not. Neither is he scowling now, even though it was the response she was aiming for.

"What now, then?" he gets up to his feet, his motions silent and sleek and precise, like panther's. His muscles flex, like he is preparing to lunge at the bars of the cell. "Seems like you cannot let go off the leash you put on my neck — do you wish to be my warden forever then, _**Hero**_," he stresses the word with an especially sharp surge of vitriol, "to be sure I shall never rise up again? Or have you taken all this time to come up with a truly insidious fate?"

Alex crosses her arms on her chest, trying to keep her calm and appear arrogant and superior. Children sulk sometimes when they know they did something wrong, but don't want to admit it, assuming a defensive insulted pout of "I didn't do it!" instead and convincing themselves they're being unfairly accused. Alex feels something like that: like trying to be a cavalier, self-important and domineering soldier makes her into one; like acting exclusive and exceptionally truly makes her _"better than others"_, and all rightfully so.

"Actually, I had other things to occupy me," she says. "Barely thought of you at all."

This time there is a flicker of resentment in him, it seems, as he sneers, "I strongly doubt it."

And this makes _**Alex**_ scowl. "Doubt this, doubt that," she mutters under her breath, though perfectly in the range of his hearing. "Why didn't you doubt _**yourself**_ a couple of months before — might have saved us both a lot of trouble."

There is a low rumbling chuckle from the cell and Saren drawls, "Indeed."

There is a pause and he takes a few steps forward, moving to the very border of his cell and putting his hands, chained together, on the bars, standing just a few feet away from Alex, towering above her and assessing her from top to bottom with a hateful glare.

"Go on, then," he leers at her. "Get it out of your system, whatever you wish to inform me of. Shower me with insults. I have heard it all in my lifetime, doubly so in the past few months, but I can still pretend to be affronted. You can switch to your human ones when you're out of intergalactic — I'll still look infuriated."

And even though the position makes her raise her chin up to meet his gaze, Alex is suddenly so overcome with disdain it still feels like she's looking down at him. "You wouldn't muster up _'infuriated'_ even if I kicked you in the shins," she says. She doesn't know anymore why she was nervous: his needling remarks only emphasize to her that he is merely a phantom of what he once was, barely worthy of her worries. The cell — the _**cage**_ — is making him into an animal, a rabid dog that still wants to bite you, but it has no teeth.

"Don't act like me despising you is uncalled for. You deserve all the hatred they throw at you," Alex mutters softly.

"Do I? Perhaps I do," he raises his head, his pride not extinguished yet, then growls with poorly suppressed fury. "And perhaps some of them best remember all the things I've done for the Council and _**didn't**_ fail at." His eyes rest on her face evenly. "You are genuine, at least — most others are just incompetent hypocrites."

His outrage being in tune with hers makes Alex even more agitated. She wants to shut her eyes and laugh, and slap him because even in defeat he has no humility. "Yes," she sneers, "because clearly your actions do not warrant public hatred." She shakes her head, and her tone drops into a low steely hum. "Half the things you did before this were monstrous — cruel, unapologetic, cold. This," she tilts her head back, towards the window, indicating the space beyond this ship, beyond this room and beyond this moment, all the galaxy and what he has almost done to it, "this is beyond redemption."

He says nothing. His face is hard and impenetrable. Turians are often hard to read, but Saren has this mask-like structure that makes it seem like he's always glowering.

It amazes her and she mutters, "Don't you feel guilty at all?" She bites her tongue instantly, regretting that she has let the words spill out — they are childish and naïve, and they both know it, and with this question she allows for another round of this verbal sparring, giving him another weapon to prickle her with.

"Do you?" he grunts back, baring his teeth a little in what seems like a sneer. He's taunting her. "I don't know if it's that you're human or that you're so _**young**_," he speaks, and Alex narrows her eyes dangerously. She really isn't, and his smugness infuriates her. "There's no place for guilt when you're at war, Shepard, and I have been at war every day. You may still have your morals and qualms, but they are a dead weight. Or you only think you have them — because you feel you ought to. Time will pass and you will have no compunction."

_Just like me._ It goes unsaid, but it is implied, and Alex balls her hands into fists angrily. She has beaten him, on every turn, and he still dares to compare them. Dares to presume to understand her. Dares to lecture her on the sense of right and wrong.

"They may have checked you for implants and took them all out," she says, her voice croaked suddenly, which makes him smirk until she speaks on, "but it's already too late for you. You will always be a machine." His gaze turns murderous — that's the word for it, _murderous._ It seemed a trite term to use before, but that's the only word for him she has. "You're a murderer, Saren," she says, and this time she doesn't care if it sounds naïve. It is what it is.

He must realize that she means more than just blood on his hands, because he doesn't taunt her this time. His gaze remains hard as stone, as he pries his lips open to respond. "Is that supposed to be a shocking revelation, Shepard?" his voice seems just as hoarse as hers. "Allow me to remind you: so are you. I have indeed killed enough men, with my own hands and by my command both, that there's no count to them. Can _**you**_ count the lives you have ended with your bullets?"

But his jabs cannot pierce her anymore. "I wasn't mindless about it," she replies calmly, refusing to be baited. "You have no respect for the lives of others. _That's_ why what you did is beyond redemption."

Alex suddenly feels very tired, like this whole week of anxiety is wasted. If he were feeling guilty, she'd at least draw satisfaction from the fact that he's atoning for his mistake. But the life imprisonment is wasted on a man who has no shame. She feels goose bumps rise on her arms and shoulders, like she's talking to a dead man, a shell of a man. Like if a breeze were to pass through the room, he would crumble and dissolve into ash, because there is nothing alive about him, not any more.

"Is it about _'conscience'_ again?" he snorts. "This topic is inexhaustible with you, is it?" Surprisingly, he turns away from her, and moves back into the shadowy depths of his cell. "You have beaten me, Shepard," he says, and his voice seems tired as well. "So you can decide whatever you want about of what drove me and whether I feel guilt even remotely. You are, after all, left writing the history," he concludes spitefully.

The hull of _Valiant_ gives a little creak, and Alex feels a soft shudder go through its frame, like the ship has sighed. Looking out briefly out the window she sees confirmation to what she already knows: the carrier has just went out of FTL through the Apien Crest relay. She feels their speed decreasing and knows it's time for her get back. The conversation is over, and is has been all but pointless.

Turning her head back to Saren she gazes over his back turned to her and her mind is flooded by images of the fight… They've named it the _Battle of the Citadel,_ they are revising textbooks and the galactic codex with passages about that day, impersonal, scientific, meaningless.

"_Shepard fought Saren's forces inside the Citadel and eventually forced the ward arms open again. At about the same time the Commander defeated Saren, Sovereign's once-impervious kinetic barrier overloaded and the Fifth Fleet focused its military might to shatter the flagship."_ The _**flagship**_! What bull! _"The geth fleet was soon decimated without its leader."_

Bull. Bull, bull, total crap, bull, fucking bullshit! But what do they know?.. That's the sour point of being the survivor, the witness of something so terrible: no one _**ever**_ knows. They walk around, sighing and gasping and saying, "How terrible!" and "How lucky we are!" and "How brave were you!", and they cannot, even in their wildest dreams, comprehend the reality of what it was like. That fight is something no one can fairly imagine and something Alex will never forget.

The moment seemed to be moving, shifting, collapsing onto itself, like a coiling python whose rings aren't stacking but slipping into each other. Adrenaline burnt through her blood, and all the wounds and bruises and gashes were numb from pain and seemed not to be hurting anymore. The muscles were so strained every step was a knife twisted in her flesh, a hot poker branding it, but Alex just couldn't stop walking. Sweat trickled down her forehead, stinging her eyes, and soot clung to her face, stuffing her nose and mouth, making her cough hoarsely.

The Citadel Tower was violated. Alex had no other word for it after witnessing Sovereign sitting directly on top of it, its metal limbs crushing it, stroking at it surface — he was _**violating**_ it. And the pinnacle of the tower was afire. The trees — those perfect Thessian creations that had been arching lithely, bursting into blossoms of pink and orange, now crumbled down, black and devoid of life.

And at the end of this burning plane Saren waited for her. Taunting, proud and oblivious, standing on the ashes of his victory, lives crumbling to his feet.

"You've lost," he told her haughtily, the metal ringing in his throat. "You know that, don't you? In a few minutes Sovereign will have full control of all the Citadel's systems. The relay will open. The Reapers will return." He was almost exhilarated saying it, like the indoctrination had worked into his mind like a drug, sending him in the state of euphoria at the thought of this devastation.

"I've still got a few tricks up my sleeve!" Alex shouted from the cover, biding time.

"You survived our encounter on Virmire… But I've changed since then. Improved. Sovereign has upgraded me." And she shouldn't have cared about that, but it terrified her, and all of a sudden she felt angry on _**his**_ behalf that this monstrous machine had done something so terrible to a living being, twisted him so utterly.

"I suppose I should thank you, Shepard," he voiced, nonplussed at her vocal outrage. She could hear the metal ringing in his throat, ripping his voice apart. "After Virmire I couldn't stop thinking about what you said. About Sovereign manipulating me. About indoctrination. The doubts began to eat away at me. Sovereign sensed my hesitation. I was implanted to strengthen my resolve."

_I suppose I should thank you, Shepard,_ he said and damned her with those words. _Thank you_, said his mouth, and in her clear unaffected mind it translated into _It's all your fault._ She didn't stop it. She didn't convince him that last time, didn't save him from this fate. Didn't _**kill**_ him. She had to rectify that now.

"Now my doubts are gone," Saren went on meanwhile. "I believe in Sovereign completely. I understand that the Reapers need organics. Join us and Sovereign will find a place for you, too."

Shudder ran though her whole body as she peeked out of the cover. Saren wasn't luring her out in the open for a fight; he had no weapon in his hands and his gaze was frighteningly open. His arms were outstretched in what seemed like a welcome. Like he expected her to walk up to him and embrace him like a wayward child that she was, and through him embrace the philosophy of the Reapers.

"Sovereign's controlling you through your implants. Don't you see?" she begged for him to see reason.

"The relationship is symbiotic," he snapped back, and this time an undertone of desperation colored his voice — like there was some chink in his armor after all. "Organic and machine intertwined, a union of flesh and steel. The strengths of both, the weaknesses of neither. I am a vision of the future, Shepard. The evolution of all organic life. This is our destiny. Join Sovereign and experience a true rebirth!"

And in her mind Alex could clearly see it: this one step, one time of giving in, so easy, so tempting — and all would be lost. Because right now this whole moment was the sharp end of a needle — thin, fragile, about to break — and she was the only one who still held the world in balance on top of that needle. This amount of responsibility — she resented it, and it made the step towards Saren and Sovereign even more alluring.

But she knew better.

"The Reapers don't _**'use'**_ organics — they devour and discard them! As soon as the conquest is over, you'll be cast aside! Sovereign hasn't won yet! I can stop it from taking control of the station! Step aside and the invasion will never happen."

_Step aside,_ were her words. _Don't make me fight you,_ was what she really meant by it. _Aren't you tired of all the fighting?_

"We can't stop it," Saren growled, frustrated by her stubbornness. "Not forever. You saw the visions. You saw what happened to the Protheans. The Reapers are too powerful."

"You could have resisted!" she threw back at him. "Could have fought! Instead, you surrendered. You quit." And she could not.

"I had no choice!" this time the desperation, the defensiveness was clear as a bell. Indoctrination was imperfect — or imperfectly done to Saren. Or he was just strong enough to fight it, still. "You saw the visions. You saw what happened to the Protheans! Surrender or death — these are our only options."

"We can _**fight!**_" she growled back, feeling like a turian herself. Fighting was all she had ever done and she was tired, and she wanted to give up and close her eyes and perhaps fall asleep and then wake up in an infirmary and realize that this was all a vivid horrible nightmare caused by the beacon, because Reapers were just a scientific myth. Or maybe she wouldn't wake up at all. She nodded, pleased by the idea, and sputtered, "Because I'd rather die than live like that!"

"Then you will die." She thought it was a threat at first, before recognizing that the desperation didn't vanish from Saren's voice — it was just better concealed now. "And your companions. Everyone you know and love. Everyone you've ever met. Don't you understand? You will all die! The Reapers can't be stopped. Not by Protheans, not by you — the cycle always continues."

The "needle" of the moment was shaking from the strenuous pull of her and Saren — like they were playing tug-of-war with the whole Citadel as the rope. It had to stop, right now. Scrambling to her feet she grabbed her pistol and stood straight — or the straightest that her injuries allowed — and looked at Saren. It was all a gamble: either her, or him. At the moment, this was the best plan she had — and no strength for other plans.

"Some part of you must still realize that this is wrong!" she spoke in a clear voice, ringing with idealism and hope and, perhaps, a drop of the same desperation.

Saren's hand went for his Crossfire as he stared at her, startled and seemingly at a loss, like some part of him hoped they would be stuck in the quicksand of the verbal fight forever. And now that he had to act, he didn't really want to.

"Maybe you're right…" she barely heard him whisper. "But…" he groaned and bent over, as if from a kick in the gut, his raised arm dropping uselessly to hang at the side of his body. "It's too late for me."

"No!" Alex's hand eased up on her holster and she stepped forward instinctively, despite Garrus's hiss to get back. "It's never too late," she exclaimed passionately. "We can end this together!"

Saren raised his head to look at her, his synthetic eyes not appearing hateful for the first time since she'd met him almost six months back. With a clench of the heart Alex realized: he was scared. "The implants…" she heard him say. "Sovereign is too strong. I'm sorry, Shepard, but I have lost this battle a long time ago. You will have to go on without me."

Her eyebrows shot up as she tried to grasp what the hell he was on about, and then her eyes widened as he pulled out his pistol and pushed into his lower jaw. "Good-bye, Shepard," he looked at her steadily. "Thank you."

A shot hammered, and Alex lunged forward, as the light went out in the synthetic eyes, and the herculean figure of Saren suddenly went limp and slid off the geth glider, falling backward. She heard the sound of the glass shattering, and as she reached the edge and looked down, she saw his body, lying there in a twisted posture, several shards piercing through him, glistening with dark blue blood — at least something was still life-like in him.

Then Garrus snapped her to attention and they opened the Citadel arms, controlling the turn of the battle: the needle moment, unbroken, still was holding the balance in danger of snapping, and it was up to her to sacrifice her own fleet and save the Council who couldn't care less — she knew they wouldn't and she did it anyway, for the sake of balance.

Only when the carriers and cruises of the Fifth Fleet went against the Sovereign, with Normandy at the head of it, just like she'd wished for it to be, did Alex return her attention to the body lying on the lawn underneath them.

"Make sure he's dead," she told her companions quietly, and watched Liara jump down limberly and Garrus land after her with a heavy huff.

Liara went up to the body and kneeled, checking for vitals — a doctor, all the way. _He's dead,_ was what she was supposed to say. It stood so vivid in Alex's ears she almost imagined she already heard her say it.

And then the girl looked up at Alex with worry and astonishment, exclaiming, "Shepard! He's alive."

Alex felt like a horse kicked her in the sternum, knocking all the air out of her lungs. "What?" she choked, turning back to them swiftly, staring at the body for any sign of activity — but it appeared as lifeless as before.

"Not for long," Garrus growled menacingly, pulling out his shotgun, but Alex stopped him.

"No."

The turian twisted his head to stare at her in disbelief: they had talked of it before. _I don't intend to let him live,_ Alex promised, as they were cleaning their rifles after dealing with Garrus's old friend Saleon. Violently. And now, she was backing on her promise.

"You can't seriously be considering sparing him" Garrus growled angrily. "You are not merciful to criminals, Shepard — have never been. Don't start now, not with him."

"This is bigger than vengeance, Garrus," Liara argued serenely. "He could tell us so much about the Reapers, about indoctrination—"

"No," Alex stopped them. They looked back at her again, unsure who she was speaking out against. Alexandra jumped down to join them and walked up to take a closer look at her defeated enemy.

"How do you survive a gunshot to the face?" she whispered.

"Must be the implants," Liara replied just as softly.

"Or incredible luck, Spirts help him," Garrus added.

Alex nodded. "If he survived this, he should stay alive," she muttered.

"But, Shepard—" Garrus tried to argue with her again.

"No, Gar, don't you see? Killing him would be doing him a favor. He doesn't deserve it. He should pay for his crimes, pay for them every day."

She didn't meet his eyes to see if he agreed with her and merely crouched by Saren's side. At this range she clearly saw thin currents of his suit running along his body. Reaching out, she touched one of the implants, one at the back of his neck, and a jolt went through her whole body, making the metal attachment burst into sparks — not strained electric ones, but red bursts of energy that Alex recognized only too well. They were a mark of Sovereign.

The energy dug into earth underneath Alex's fingers, and she stumbled backwards, trying to escape it. But the rays were not aiming for her: they ran towards the pillars, to the structural keystones of the room, shattering them, making the upper level collapse onto them. The might of the impact threw them in the air and away from the blast zone.

As the dust started settling, Alex saw that the energy flowed from the conductor on Saren's body that was clearly still connected to Sovereign towards the fallen geth that she'd been shooting at just minutes ago, serving like a hub for them.

"Maybe it was not such a bad idea to shoot him," Liara whispered, standing up behind her and Garrus.

"Too late now," the turian growled. "It will just overload and the explosion can kill us. We will have to—" _fight this,_ he was probably going to say, but stopped, as the geth started piling onto each other, following some bizarre laws of magnetism, compiling into something as awkward and repulsive and titanic as Sovereign itself — a conglomerate of geth with many a-limbs and dozens of singular eyes-flashlights. It didn't look like it could walk but it did — with the grace of the proverbial colossus with clay feet. It shouldn't have been able to talk, but the screech of geth stutter surprisingly connected into words, and the words were,

"_I AM SOVEREIGN AND THIS STATION IS MINE!"…_

_Valiant_ gives another shudder as it's slowing down, shaking Alexandra out of her daydreaming. She shakes her head at what she's wasting her memories on: the nightmares of that battle frequent her as it is. She doesn't need to spend even a second recalling it in her waking hours.

The memories still cluttering in her head, she looks at Saren who has retreated to the darkest corner of his cell, and whispers all of a sudden, unable to stop herself.

"It would have been easier if you died with Sovereign."

He shifts and raises his head, his eyes glowing at her again. "Yes," he concedes. "It would have been a more desired outcome for me as well."

She hesitates, her hand inches from the panel that would open the door, and looks at Saren one last time. It would have been easier in more ways than one: not just for him, but for her — easier to let go, to forget and perhaps forgive, to stop being so angry. But she _**is**_ angry, angry at him for surviving, and angry enough to not want him dead. No, she wants him to suffer.

As if hearing her thoughts, Saren suddenly growls and rises to his feet abruptly. Alex tenses and twists to face him, her hand going for the pistol holster instinctively. But he isn't looking at her — he looks outside the window, where they can easily see a Giant Jovian floating by.

"This isn't right," Saren says tensely. "What is this?" he turns to glare at her accusatory, like this is her doing somehow. Her fault, her trick — something. "This isn't Apien Crest," he growls.

"What do you mean?" Alex scoffs, a snake of fear uncoiling in her stomach. "How can it be not Apien Crest?"

The turian extends his arm and points one steely talon at the gas giant they are passing by. "Trebia doesn't have planets with ring systems," he growls and repeats, "This isn't Apien Crest."

Alex stares at him and doesn't say it, the question ringing obvious enough in the strained silence. _Then where the hell are we?_

There is a grim satisfaction in her when she thinks it: she _knew_ something would go wrong, she just fucking _**knew**_ it. At least now she's here to prevent it.

Small facts are clicking in as well: like that the journey through FTL has taken much longer than expected. No one has been perturbed — _Valiant_ is, after all, a dinosaur, chosen because of all that it represents to turians, because it has been the perfect prison ship. So what if it's a little slow? But maybe it's not. Maybe it's just that the jump from the Widow relay to wherever they are now has been twice as long. Which means they are definitely out of the Council space — either in the Traverse, or in the Terminus.

There is another stifled moan of metal through the hull, and the ship comes to an abrupt halt, floating in between two planets that Alex sees going up to the window and looking out. That's when her view is marred by a tremendous shadow that looms over _Valiant_ all of a sudden. With a sickening feeling Alex realizes that it belongs to a ship — and if _Valiant_ is big, this thing is gargantuan! Bending and twisting her neck she can see its edges spreading far beyond _Valiant_'s.

Another shudder jolts through the ship, and Alex sees hooks flying into _Valiant's_ hull from their assailant — that they have been led into a trap and this is an assault she has no doubt about. Unholstering her gun, she retreats from the window, falling into a cautious crouch, and makes it back to the door.

Hitting the panel to open the door she points her pistol at the doorway. It's empty. Even Haron is nowhere to be seen.

As Alexandra steps forward, metallic turian voice makes an attempt of stopping her. "You're not thinking of leaving me here, are you?" he demands, mostly indignant, but somewhat worried too.

Alex turns around, holding the sliding door back, and scoffs, "You're not thinking I'd let you walk out of here!" she mimics his intonation.

"Shepard," he calls out for her and stops, no other words making it out of his mouth.

Their conclusion differs, but their concern is the same: whoever staged this, could have come to all these lengths for one reason only — _Saren_.

"Don't worry, _vision of the future_," she scoffs, making him scowl back at her, baring his teeth, "if I smell real trouble, I'll come back and get you. One way or another, but you'll make it to that prison. That's a promise!"

His scowl twists further, and Alex stifles a resounding laughter, before turning around and walking out of the room, leaving all her worries, all her petty problems back in that room, with Saren. She is a brutal and vicious fighter and she is a merciless winner of any battle thrown at her. To continue winning she needs to have her head in the game, which she will.

The door slides shut behind her, as smoothly as the surface of water sucking closed over something that has been dropped into it and erasing all traces of it ever happening. It shuts and, just like that, consumes the prisoner in his cell freeing her of the insanity of the moment, like nothing ever happened.

Alexandra turns back and steps into the shadows, blending in with them.  
The turian ship remains as it has always been: dark and silent and seemingly asleep.


	2. The Path to Freedom

**2. The Path to Freedom**

_**A/N:** Apologies, sincere apologies for the outrageous delay in the updates. Will try my best to update weekly._

_I haven't been able to answer all of your reviews either, but I really love each and every one of them. Your support pushes me forward to write more than you know._

_Also, Saren is quite hard to write. Not sure if I'm doing him justice. So, will be awaiting your further opinions on how this AU is going down!_

_**Lots of love!**_

* * *

The halls of _Valiant_ are darker than usual, the emergency system having shut off all the lights and turning on the neon arrows on the floor. Alex ignores them and creeps through the shadows squeezing her Cobra tightly. The eerie silence she knows too well from all the dead freighters she has boarded gets on her nerves, as is having no backup, and she tries to find where the attack is happening. They can't all be bloody mute.

Her desire is fulfilled a few minutes later, as she finally hears the muffled shots and choked yells. The intruders have only just entered through the main door — some pirates they are. Crossing the hall she presses her back to the wall and peeks around through a wall of glass that separates them.

One of the _Valiant_ soldiers lies dead on the floor, the others are nowhere to be seen — Alex can only hope they are preparing the barricades. The attackers are fairly numerous and rather diverse — humans, batarians and turians. They wear blue armor with white markings that seems faintly familiar, and as they secure the room they seem to be waiting for something.

Or, rather, _someone_ as it turns out, as another turian walks in, shoving the dead body away with a foot, making Alex seethe. He is tall, broad-shouldered, and as he disengages his helmet, she feels a slight shiver run down her spine, as he is also _barefaced_. No colony. Just like Saren.

"Search the ship," his powerful voice is muffled but discernible through the thick panel of glass. "Get the cargo. Leave no one else alive."

Alex tenses her jaw and holsters the pistol, slowly disappearing back into the shadows. She can very well imagine what _'cargo'_ the damned pirates mean. This is exactly the kind of scenario she has signed on this ship for — to prevent any attempts to compromise her justice from being served. And she has to believe that some events just bloody _**have**_ to happen to balance each other out, and there is only one path for a man who has lead a lifetime of violence and has hurt so many — incarceration. The world will be relieved to see Saren locked up.

But for her it is also personal — from Eden Prime through Feros to Virmire and Ilos, it has been _**her**_ chase, and has become _**her**_ victory. To see him imprisoned is her just reward.

And if for that she has to save him from a pirate attack, she will damn well do it. He doesn't deserve to be shot here in an act of someone's vengeance. And she will die before seeing him freed after everything that has happened. She is the only one who can decide on his fate. It is her right, earned by blood and death — no one else's.

Turning around as silently as her training has imprinted in her blood Alexandra merges with the shadows, making her way back to the Holding Cell level.

* * *

Motionless in the middle of the cage, Saren feels like he is slowly going insane, having nothing to occupy the mind. It has been a few weeks and his resolve that he can take it because he probably deserves it is shattered. He _**can't**_ be confined for the rest of his life. He will not survive it. Alone with his thoughts, with memories of his hands killing his best friend and so many others he feels as bad as under actual Sovereign's control.

He is a creature of action. He cannot be chained. Yet who will ever set him free? Shepard is smart: she has chosen the worst possible punishment. He wonders if letting him live is unwitting cruelty in her trying to be merciful, or simply her being cruel.

He thinks back to her visit... Was it minutes back? Hours? He grits his teeth, his blood boiling in angry resentment of losing his grasp on reality again.

Feeling a foreign presence in the room he expected another idle guard who'd come to gawk at how the proverbial _mighty had fallen_. Instead he found himself facing his nightmare — the girl whose burning accusing eyes haunt his every dream, inseparable from the synthetic noise of Sovereign.

She relieved the guardsman and then... nothing. She was saying nothing, just moved towards the window and stared out, like he wasn't even there. He had been expecting mockery, accusations, violent outburst. Her silence was eerily turian.

When she finally turned, her eyes were no less accusing. At least this was not naivety of fools who had blamed him and called him a monster just because his actions had gone against their precious idealistic morals. She was accusing him because she knew. She went through the same hell that he did, and she went through it because of him.

She said nothing still and just stared at him mutely. He wanted to not let the pause linger, utter her name, just say something, something glib that would make her flip. Instead he bid his time. Or maybe his parched tongue had become stuck to the palate. Either way all he could do was stare back at her, just as silently.

"Saren."

No that's not right. He has managed to break the silence first — an off-hand remark, as easygoing as he can manage being caged. _I was starting to doubt you'll ever show..._

"Saren."

Her voice is like a shot fired in the silence. It tastes of metal and polonium, poisoning his air.

He blinks and will himself back to reality. She's standing in the doorway, looking over her shoulder tensely.

"The ship is being attacked," she says, unsuspecting of how rattled he is. "Pirates, delinquents, whoever they are they are here for you."

No big surprise. The both suspected it as soon as it became clear the relay they exited from was not Apien Crest. The confirmation in her face tells him nothing. He is silent and waits for her next decision. Is he to be left here to his fate? No, she would hardly come back to cordially inform him of that.

He finds her eyes, full of doubt and resolution and realizes — she has come to kill him. He _**is**_ her trophy, after all, and she has wanted to carry out his punishment all this time — he at least is sure of that. And if she cannot, she will not let others take the satisfaction away from her. She will finish the job. And these torturous months have been all for nothing.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" he prompts, as Shepard keeps staring at him, seemingly holding her breath.

She narrows her eyes and then flips open the panel on his cage and pushes in the code that deactivates the biotic barrier that would have protected him from the shots. _Yes_. At least he will not go insane.

He doesn't want to die. At this moment he wants to live with every fiber of his being. He would have fought whoever is trying to take over the ship. He will not fight Shepard — he owes her that much. And maybe this is a better solution.

"Allow me," she hisses, "at least a moment of hesitation before I act against half of my regulations." She punches in the second code and the locks on the cell pop open. She swings the door open and steps inside, holding her pistol tightly.

He contemplates if he wants her face to be the last thing he sees and decides to close his eyes, perhaps think of his brother. Then Shepard's voice shakes him out of it, sending a jolt of shock through him. "Well, what are you sitting there for? Get your ass up!"

He snaps his eyes open and looks at her. Her pistol is still lowered and it doesn't look like she is about to shoot. His mind goes blank in incomprehension.

"Saren," she growls, "we are under attack, we haven't got all day!" Looking around she finds his manacles and grabs them, kneeling in front of him. Grabbing both of his wrists she yanks them up and cuffs him.

He is still discomfited. "What are you doing, Shepard?" he croaks.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" she looks at him angrily, defiantly. "I'm not letting anyone break you out, or kidnap for ransom, or shoot you here — whichever they're here for. I have sworn to get you to that turian prison and I will," she growls through clenched teeth. "We're getting out."

His face grows slack. As she watches his expression, her own features turn hard and suspicious. She doesn't ask what he himself thought was going to happen. She just yanks him upright and he has no choice but to follow the movement, like a leashed varren, his eyes peering into the human hatefully.

Every time they meet she comes out on top, holding all power over him, and he resents that any one _**single**_ person could reign over him, let alone a human. And that marks the second time she has chosen to spare him where he would have killed — a terrible weakness on her part, a notion made even stronger by the fact that it's _**him**_ she's sparing. In her shoes he wouldn't hesitate to make the solution permanent instead of volatile. And a mistake twice made will return to haunt her twice over.

"You are a fool," he remarks, stepping out of the cage, earning her dirty glare.

"And you're done for," she spits. "I came onto this ship to make sure you'd get yours and I'll be damned if I let a bunch of shitty pirates to prevent justice."

He stares icily at her. "This is not about justice — this is about revenge, and we both know it," he says levelly, keeping his high air. "At least own up to your malice."

Shepard looks like she might punch him in the face. Instead she takes out a pistol and steps out of the room. "I don't have to explain myself to you," she mutters.

He sneers. What is there to explain? He understands her perfectly — she reminds him of Nihlus in this manner: equal parts vicious and idealistic, the two sides constantly at odds. He felt guilty about being selfish and vengeful and unscrupulous too. And, just like Shepard, he kept doing all the things that shamed him anyway.

The corridor of the ship flashes with the alarm lights, the muffled sound of the siren busting a few blocks away. It is empty — whoever has been around, they long abandoned their posts. Shepard leads the way confidently, yet he has to question if she knows where she's going.

"Who has attacked us? Have you seen them?" he queries. First things first.

"Blue armor with white stripes. A mixed-race group, led by a barefaced turian."

Blue Suns, then. Killed enough of them to hate the bloody things. His expression must betray it, because Shepard gives him a questioning look. But her question is about the leader, not the group. "Heard of him?"

"Tribeless turians do not form a _'bareface faction'_, Shepard," he retorts scornfully, his mandibles sliding wide apart. "How do humans intend to earn the respect of galactic community while remaining in ignorance?"

"You will forgive me if I only know the cultural nuances necessary for diplomacy," she replies through gritted teeth. "Bad guys? I just tend to put hypervelocity rounds through their heads."

He doesn't say that he's the living proof she's not infallible — it would be beside the point. Any conversation between them is. They proceed further along in total silence.

Shepard stops by a power conduit, linking her omni-tool to the ship's systems. The synch doesn't take too long, and she brings up a holo of the blueprint of the whole carrier. "This is the evacuation module," she zooms in and her face grows harsh. "Several rescue pods have been used already," she mutters, frowning, "but the other— They're disabled."

She manipulates several more consoles and brings up the video feed from the room: the Blue Suns are already there, shutting down the lifepods, so there'd be no escape. It's very much their style: to dangle the bait and pull it just out of your reach. He doubts they'll even leave an ambush — just fry the systems, so that anyone who'd come there would see the means of escape... without being able to access them.

"We'll... have to fight them," Shepard says quietly, her voice lacking the necessary resolve, as she is flicking through the security feed trying to find the other shipmates.

Saren hardly sees the point. In order to safely restore function of the lifepods they need to get rid of all the attackers — and there is no way they can turn the tide around. They are only two, and he is in cuffs. No amount of nediocre security positioned here will change that.

He, however, has other ideas...

"I bet you there is one place where the pods are intact."

Shepard stares at him, her face blank, and he wonders how someone so narrow-minded could have defeated him. His mandibles flare.

Then her eyes widen in shock. "You're not suggesting we walk onto the ship of the very people who are currently killing everyone to get to you!" she hisses.

"And their own ship would be the last place they will look for either of us, while they are scouring _Valiant_." Shepard scowls, unconvinced. "Or are you'd rather involve yourself in a hopeless suicide mission of taking up arms against every merc on this ship? Even a human should realize that's crazy."

She narrows her eyes. "No, smuggling ourselves onto the board of an enemy ship — that's suicide! How do you propose we do that without getting instantly shot?"

"Put on the Blue Suns armor." He has a ready response to that. "Become them for a little while and then try to remain undetected as long as possible."

Shepard doesn't seem impressed with his reasoning ability. Slowly, she says, "And I would have to unchain you, wouldn't I?"

He frowns momentarily — the thought hasn't yet occurred to him: he'd rather escape the _Valiant_, and then deal with Shepard and his imprisonment. "Please..." he snaps. "This is not about me! You have a better plan?"

She looks daggers at him again before turning away in half-hearted concession. "Let's just go."

* * *

She leads them to the docking block, where the two ships are connected by a space corridor and where the fight has been the thickest. There are several merc corpses here they are free to marauder.

Shepard looks around in distaste. He stares at her expectantly. "The keys, if you please?"

She doesn't argue again, apparently having inwardly assented that this is the best course of action. She still looks like someone has put a gun to her head when she unshackles him. Tossing the manacles away she turns her back to him and starts unstrapping a human male — there are no women here, she will just have to do.

Watching her back he sneers at her credulity. Does she really assume he's that harmless, or that honorable? Because he has shot his best friend in the back — although she hardly has knowledge of that fact. And while he never meant to kill Nihlus, looking at Shepard right now a part of him is resigned to her, because she has freed him from indoctrination, because they are enemies under truce, but another part, a proud unyielding part, wants to grab a pistol and shoot her, and be done with the guilt and the shame.

That has always been his out from many mistakes — wipe out the evidence and not feel a shred of remorse. Except killing her wouldn't fix anything — only make him feel better. And, although he feels vile taste in his mouth just by admitting it silently, he hardly can escape alone. He needs another set of hands. Even human ones.

Five minutes later their disguises are as ready as they'll ever be. He picked the bulkiest turian, but his armor is still tight on him, crushing his thorax. By Council's edict he has been stripped of almost every piece of the synthetic flesh, whittled down, and still he is larger than most turians — it's a weak salve for his wounded dignity, but the notion pleases him.

Contrariwise, Shepard's armor is too big for her, the shoulders and thighs hanging loose on her body. But she doesn't say anything about that to him and he doesn't either. Banter like that implies camaraderie — something the two of them will never have. They are rivals. And in the end they just don't care — about each other's appearance, comfort, or safety.

"You ready?" Shepard looks up at him, putting the helmet.

He nods and lets her through in front of himself, maintaining the illusion that she still holds his leash. But you don't free a wild animal caged against its will and expect it to still act tamed and follow your commands...

In the cage he might have been okay with being put down like a varren, but outside, walking again, fighting again, he's alive. And he knows he can live with the shame, however poisonous it is in his mind every second that he breathes. He'd rather be choked by guilt and free, then raving mad inside _Incarceron_.

"Halt!" a voice stops them mid-tunnel. He jerks his head upward and sees a batarian, looking at them suspiciously. "Why are you back?" he demands.

"He's been shot," Shepard replies instantly. "I'm helping him back to the med-bay."

"Why are you in helmets?" Four eyes narrow at them in suspicion.

Saren sighs, preparing to blast him with biotics. But Shepard is unconcerned and continues to lie smoothly. "Ah, just forgot to take them off — the fools used neurotoxin grenades, paralyzed one of the newbies." She scoffs and shrugs.

Batarian _humph_s. "Well, let me see your face. Protocal, you know."

Shepard doesn't move. "No," she replies in a hard voice, scowling. "I _**don't**_ know. You batarians are all racist."

"Headgear — off," he doesn't budge.

With a dejected sigh Shepard complies, tugging the helmet off. Two pairs of eyes widen in obvious recognition and he opens his comm. "We've got a situation here—" he starts, but before Saren can even think of blasting the full with biotics and before the batarian can even think to struggle, Shepard slides behind his back, sleek and elusive, and snaps his neck. Just like that.

Saren stares at the body that goes limp and falls on its face, as Shepard kneels beside it and grabs the radio transmitter and assault rifle. It is surprising that a creature as miniscule and soft as an asari can wield so much power. The best of their commandos pride themselves strictly in their biotics, anyway, — that's the only source of their strength. And Shepard doesn't look like she has a lot of muscle on her either, yet she effortlessly breaks a thick batarian neck. Not so foolish and incapable after all.

Looking up, she gives him a dubious appraising look and then tosses him the assault rifle. He doesn't ask why she trusts him with a weapon, and she doesn't offer a grudging explanation. The situation is obvious as it is — they are stepping on enemy turf and to have each other's back they need to be armed and ready. Both of them.

"Post Alpha," the radio transmitter comes to life. "Come in, Post Alpha, we have lost your readings."

Shepard looks up at him as he disengages his helmet too.

"We need to hurry," she says, needlessly.

He doesn't point it out. He just nods and they sprint the rest of the corridor. Shepard presses her omni-tool to the door and in just over a minute's time the lock flashes green and the door pops open. They slide in, no one there to stop them.

* * *

"It's a turian design," Saren notes, looking around the ship with a frown. "What the hell would turians want here?"

It is not an obtuse question: turians are military, and if the Primarch and the Councilor have decided for him to be put in _Incarceron_, that is what the others will believe to be the correct course of action. This ship is run by mercenaries — and they are rarely ones for vigilant justice. They will want profit. So the question is not what they want with him, but rather who they are working for.

He doesn't share this with Shepard, and neither does she ask for elaboration. Instead she mentions, "We need to find the control room. I had access to the blueprints of _Valiant_ as a crewmember — here I will need to hack into the system."

"Alliance trains their soldiers to do _**that**_?" he asks with contempt. Her has never been one to respect the guerilla warfare, like salarian STG — yet he shouldn't be surprised considering her shadow strike team on Virmire.

"Not many," Shepard responds. "I was trained to be a member of infiltration teams before—" she stops abruptly, as if remembering who she's talking to, and drops the phrase hanging. "The ship is massive," she says abruptly instead. "Unless you are familiar with the layout of this particular class of turian ship, we will spend too much time looking for the lifepods without the blueprint." She looks up at him expectantly. "Are you familiar?"

"No," he speaks through gritted teeth.

"Then we do need to find the control room," she declares and pushes the pad to open the door to the next room.

Growling, Saren follows her.

They end up in a glass corridor that curves and disappears out of their eyesight and who knows how long it is. Outside the glass walls he sees even rows of blocks. The ship is asleep in lieu of the attack, so no one is walking about to see the intruders. And Shepard was right — it is massive, going on and on and on.

There is a persistent nagging in his head that he knows something about this ship even though he is sure he has never been on board of it or any like it. But his mind refuses to serve him, and the nagging remains just out of reach — like a dream you want to remember and cannot, but are left with a feeling...

There is a flash in his mind's eyes, a memory — of tubes and steel and insides that look both like an interior and intestines, of red energy running about the cables, of walls moving and reshuffling, hiding something, of incessant whispers that placate your mind and stroke your spine in both a caress and torture. To have _Sovereign_ as your flagship — to serve him, and _**on**_ him and _**under**_ him.

Saren has to pause momentarily and shut his eyes, purging the thoughts out of his head. He doesn't want, doesn't _**need**_ to remember that. He wishes whoever has taken out the implants out of his body would also cleanse his mind from his nightmares.

As he opens his eyes, Shepard is looking at him — he can't say if she's worried, or just annoyed. "What?" she demands.

"Nothing," he replies in tune. "Let's move."

She scoffs and carries on, shaking her head. She marches down the hallways with utmost confidence, yet choosing turns seemingly at random. He doesn't question how she knows what she's doing — she wouldn't answer anyway.

He wonders if she knows how close he is still to breaking under the mental strain of indoctrination. That he is feet away from becoming horrifically insane. He cannot go to _Incarceron_ — there he will just become a thrall to the Reapers all the same.

As the next set of doors opens, they are welcomed into a large room with a set of computers and displays and whatnot. The control room. Shepard knew what she was doing after all.

The room isn't empty too. There are three mercs there — a human and two turians.

"Who the hell are you?" one of them demands, getting up.

Shepard and he don't even looks at each other to coordinate — the response is as natural as breathing. She raises the pistol and shoots twice, sending both bullets right between the human's eyebrows.

Saren lets his biotics loose, like flexing soar muscles, and throws a wave at one of the turians. His shields sparkle with resistance but he doesn't try to open fire. Instead he reaches for the panel and punches several buttons that send a deafening wail throughout the ship. The alarm. Now every merc knows there are intruders on the ship. Furious, Saren flips his biotics into a lasso and slips onto the turian's neck, like a noose, pulls and breaks his neck. But it's too late to reverse the damage.

Shepard finishes the other turian with a blast from her omni-tool that sets his armor on fire, filling the room with the nauseating scent of burnt flesh, and shifts closer as he tries to put out the flames, sinking the fiery blade straight into his skull.

Letting out a heavy sigh she looks up at him, concerned. "They know we're here now. Every merc on this ship is out to get us." She looks around and shoots all the cameras in the room with three well-placed shots.

"They are not an army," he responds. "We are capable with dealing with them as they come."

"No," she sits down in front of the panel and links her omni-tool to the system. "With the blueprints we can just sneak past them, quick and quiet."

The shadow approach again. Delightful.

"The longer we wait the more time they have to gather forces to capture us," he snarls. "If we fight through it won't matter."

"It's not up for a debate," she retorts.

"And what's to stop me from going there all by myself?" he slams his fist into the panel.

She looks up to meet his glare with an equally furious one, not willing to budge, and he wonders if they are about to come to blows, when the ship shudders and all the displays in the room come alive, just as the search on Shepard's omni-tool goes dead — they must have secured the information feed.

A turian's face appears on the screens — barefaced, just like Shepard said, — and it eerily seems like he's looking directly at them.

"_Commander Shepard and Saren Arterius,"_ he sneers. His mandibles are slack and unmoving, deceitful just like his lack of tribe markings. _"Allow me to welcome you to _Purgatory_. You have made my job so significantly easier by coming aboard willingly. Most unwise of you, too. Do you honestly think you can evade capture on _**my**_ ship?"_ His laughter is unpleasant and inspires in Saren a keen desire to shoot him. It click in in his memory, too, what he was trying to remember earlier. He knows the ship. And knows the captain.

He can anticipate what comes next too: the turian tells them how he only needs Saren, and that Shepard is free to leave this death trap by surrendering her prisoner. Which he knows she won't do... and yet he doesn't. Because she's not all idealism and justice. She's smart, cunning, and she wants to survive more than get him out of here and into prison. He looks at her with doubt.

But instead, the turian announces the opposite. _"The price for even one of you would be royal. To find __**both**__ of you here is incredible luck, because you both are on the market with my buyer. Run or don't, my Blue Suns will find you, disable you and process you. On my ship, you are my property, and I know exactly where my property is."_

The monitors goes dead, and Saren looks at the black screen in disbelief. All this for a wasteful threat? What a fool.

"Property?" Shepard repeats, indignant. "They are slavers?"

"Not quite," he responds. "This turian's name is Kuril, but he goes by _Warden _Kuril more often than not. And Purgatory is a prison ship." Shepard stares at him in surprise. "It was an Ark once — a ship to transport agricultural animals. Then the Blue Suns took over it and turned it into a maximum security prison for those taken captive in battle, or sold to them directly. There are about five thousand people here last I heard."

"You sold to him before?" Shepard's voice is edgy. She is expecting a yes and she won't like it.

He sneers. "Don't leave 'em alive unless the Council needs them personally. Who was I gonna sell?"

"How does they even allow it?" she seethes.

"Kuril knows who not to piss off and who is okay to press on. They have often been accused of dealings with batarian slavers, but it has never been proved, so in all fairness they appear to be operating in full accordance with the Citadel law. And the ship has proved frequently useful for high risk prisoners. Many governments are eager not to deal with their scum and ship them off for a fee. Guess it's a good place for me to end up in," he gives her a bitter grin.

Shepard neither agrees nor argues.

"So, you do know Kuril?" she asks instead.

"I've heard of him. He was some low-tier law inforcement on Palaven, and not very good at his job either — his prisoners often escaped. So he left. Must have joined the Blue Suns and carved his way up the food chain. I'm betting the prison ship was his idea from the start." His mandibles quiver in disgust.

Shepard brings up the blueprints on her omni-tool — must have managed to find them before the feed was cut off. "There are shuttles on this ship," she points the area out. "Six blocks away. This route seems like the most obscure one."

"And it takes a long detour through two blocks. We can walk through here fine. We just need a distraction." He moves closer to the control panel, studying it.

"Distraction?" she repeats, scoffing. "I have heard all about your distractions. Kind of like detonating a core of a refinery facility?"

He gives her a cold stare. "No less effective than going full-nuclear on a breeding one." She sets her jaw stubbornly and he sneers. "You are Anderson's pupil, I'll give you that. But you and I are not so unlike either." Then he bends over the panel and types in a command, pushing all the levers down.

The wail of the alarm is underlined by sounds of cages being opened, a blustering clamor of metal resounding throughout the ship, and through the glass panel they see all the prisoners coming out, gingerly, unsure of what's happening, though the alarm signal seems to reassure them that this is indeed a jailbreak.

The containers are stacked, and those in the top rows whimper, trying to get down. Those with biotics find their ways down manipulating mass effect fields. Others jump, probably judging that broken bones are worth getting out of here. Half of them start fighting between each other immediately, like mindless vorcha, but the others are clearly planning escape routes.

"We can't go there, now," Shepard hisses. "We're in Blue Suns armor! They'll shoot at us, and the Blue Suns will shoot at us."

"So lose the armor—"

"No!" she interrupts. "I have the blueprints, I know how to read them, and I can find escape routes if we're in need of one. That's why I'm in charge and _**that's**_ why it's not up for a debate. We clear, _turian_?" she growls and turns away without waiting for a response. She knows she has won this round.

Saren has little choice but to follow the human's command. Inconceivable. He's gotten so used to working alone in the past decade that conforming to someone else alone feels like a violation against his nature, let alone not being the one in charge, following another one's orders. That it should be a human is the biggest insult for his pride.

Oddly enough, the fact that the human is Shepard makes it a little more bearable.

* * *

They've passed four blocks with little incidents. A few prisoners here, some Blue Suns there — not a big obstacle. Saren has been impossible, of course, — unyielding as all turians are, decidedly refusing to take into account that he's fighting alongside someone else.

She has tried her best to be flexible around his biotic power show, but they end up being in each other way far more than actually being helpful. Not a big surprise. And his glares tell her that he thinks it's all her fault. Not a shocker either.

But when they reach Block 16, that's when the trouble start: Blue Suns are there in big numbers, having put down most of the prisoners in the room. And spotting the two of them, they give chase. In the end, there can be no plan when you're trying to avoid enemy troopers. And her plan quickly gives way to Saren's directness, out of sheer necessity.

"This way," she says, taking an abrupt turn left and slamming the door behind them, hoping the mercs will just storm past them. But the lock doesn't hold properly and the door continues opening and closing, setting off sparks, and the room is in complete disarray, prisoners clearly having passed here already.

"It's a dead end!" Saren growls, looking around.

"What?" Alex looks to where the door to the last block is supposed to be, their path to freedom...

But there is only debris there, a collapse caused by an explosion most likely, and the way is blocked. And behind them is a group of heavily armed mercs that they haven't got nearly enough ammo or strength to deal with.

The footsteps sound closer and closer, and she knows they can't just krogan-charge through. Her omni-tool is jammed, so she can't even cloak herself to get out alone — much less with her trophy prisoner.

The turian in question heads straight for the small panel on the wall.

"What do you think you're doing?" Alex hisses.

"Freeing them," he responds.

"Again? Don't you think the last time was _**enough**_?"

"Clearly, not," he snaps, and before she can stop him he sends a biotic throw at the panel frying it, so that it hisses and sends sparks flying. The panel whines in protest, not made to be handled in such a brutal manner, but gives in after a second biotic hit.

Several cages begin to move around chaotically. One is simply released from the top level and plummets down, crashing and emitting white icy mist through which a mangled corpse is seen. Two collide in the air and topple down as well, releasing more cold air.

Three make it safely to the ground, and the cages open... but no one rushes out. The room they are trapped in is clearly for prisoners in cryo-induced sleep.

"Guess we're on our own," Alex mutters, gripping her pistol. She has only one spare clip left, and one inside her Cobra is half used already. Nine shots. And with fully armed and shielded mercs it's not nearly enough. "Useless," she mutters to the piece of crap pistol and wishing her sniper rifle were with here right now. From behind cover and with a properly working omni-tool she'd have no problem dealing with the lot on her own.

But there's no use thinking of 'what if's. Gripping the pistol tighter, she remains perfectly calm and collected and prepares for the onslaught.

* * *

Saren says nothing: if the human is ready to give up so easily, that's her problem. He has faced worse situations than a swarm of pathetic merc grunts — he has faced her, for one.

He puts up the biotic barrier just in time for when the doors finally slide open, letting in a group of mercenaries. There is at least a dozen, maybe more. He sprays them with a burst of bullets until the clip in the assault rifle clicks empty, then ducks, reloading.

"How many shots you got left?" he demands.

"Not enough, even with your biotics," she remains pessimistic. "And my omni-tool is out."

He clicks his mandibles in frustration. "Aren't you gonna shoot me, then? So that you would be the one to put me down, not them? So that there would be no chance that you'll die here, and I won't?"

Her eyes flicker to his, and he thinks he shouldn't have taunted her with the idea because she is not idealistic and is not all about rules. She _**considers**_ it. Her fingers flex on her pistol. He thinks that if he puts up another biotic shield in between of them, the one that is protecting them from Blue Suns will no longer hold.

Instead of responding, by words _**or**_ action, she peeks from behind the cover once, assessing the situation, then again, firing the gun. One, two, three, _click_ — the empty clip falls onto her hand. There are gurgling sounds and a scream behind them and as Saren looks out carefully, he sees two more corpses — two bullets in one and the third in the other. Apparently, Shepard doesn't miss.

"I've been in worse foxholes than this one. You aren't baiting me into giving you an out," she says dryly, reloading.

And he has to wonder if his taunt has worked and put her into a fighting mood, or he has terribly misread her and she was never about to give up in the first place. And how it is that she has ended up thinking that he was begging her for a mercy killing.

He sneers: no matter. She cannot think worse of him than she already does, and he doesn't care for her opinion of his character anyway.

All of a sudden they are defeaned by a biotic wave that rolls across the room, slamming Saren's barrier away and tossing their cover down. As they struggle to their feet, stunned, ears ringing, and look back, there is a warp of biotic energy in the middle of the room that just _**explodes **_the crowd of mercs, tossing them about like bugs, sending flying in different direction, broken, bleeding, screaming and raining their entrails all over the room.

There is a woman standing in the mouth of one of the open cryo cells, her head shaved clean, her body tattooed up to the point of being repulsive. She's panting heavily, just having woken up from a strong cryo, but her hands are alight with biotics unlike Saren has ever seen in humans. Even asari commandos cannot all boast this amount of mastery — she's _**powerful**_.

Looking around at the bloody mangled bodies that are mostly her doing she smirks in dark delight and then peers at him and Shepard, her eyes narrowing at their sight and her biotics flaring up again. "Out of my way, dogs," she growls, her voice hoarse and low, somewhat like Shepard's, but then again, human voices mostly sound alike to him.

"We're captives, just like you," Shepard responds, raising her hands placatingly. "We're trying to get off this ship."

The woman grimaces in resentment. "I ain't nothing _'like you'_, sissy." She straightens up and cracks her knuckles, before jumping down to the floor. She is short, looking even more fragile than Shepard who is a willowy operative and has proved to be good at sabotage and bloody useless in a melee fight.

Except that humans, apparently, do not correlate to their powers in terms of their appearance. Because each of these females is a powerhouse. The thought makes Saren sneer. _Humans_. Even their biology is deceptive.

Shepard's face darkens at the woman's arrogance, and she is quick to stoop to the same level of politeness. "Hey, screw you, bitch! I've had enough shit today that I don't need to listen to your crap. I only care if you want to ditch this hole with us or we each go our separate ways."

"Fuck," the girl smiles. "That's a much better way to make an impression. Bitch."

Saren's mandibles oscillate in confusion. The language suggests offense, yet she is smiling and Shepard grows more relaxed too. He can't understand humans at all. Not that he has a need to.

"You've got a plan, or what?" the girls draws nearer, though her eyes are still studying them with great care.

Shepard looks her up in assessment and nods, a pleased smirk spreading on her lips. "There are shuttles in the block next to us." She points at the collapsed wall. "Unfortunately, the route is blocked." She looks at the woman suggestively.

The girl smiles back at Shepard with alarming visciousness and squares her shoulders enthusiastically, eager to let her biotics blast the wall away.

"My fucking pleasure."


	3. Omegatropic

**3. Omegatropic**

_**A/N:** Okay, clearly I should not presume to predict my writing habits or make promises I am unable to keep._

_Writing several fics simultaneously and combining this with writing my thesis proves to be very time consuming.  
_

_All I can do is promise that no matter how long the gaps, this story will someday have its finish.  
_

_**Lots of love**, as always!  
_

* * *

The first time Alex saw a gun go off in front of her was in 2168. One sound and she was lost, goosebumps rising on her naked arms, sweat breaking out on her back under the shirt, coating her body in a sleek syrupy sense of fear, intangible and inescapable like perfume when you leave the bottle open. The echo of a shot mixed into the high-pitched buzz in her ears, the sound of bloodrush inside her head, both a whisper and a shocking scream, going into her brain, her guts, her heart.

She saw it on vids before, of course; sometimes heard the hunters going after big game. Saw some of the men in the colony carrying Phalanxes. It's nothing like that in real life.

The gun she saw that day was not Alliance issue, the target it hit was not an animal and the hand holding it was not human.

The spring that year came late — not that it was ever early on Mindoir — and the colony saw its first thatches of grass in the middle of April. Alex had just turned fourteen, barely a week before.

The morning of that day was grey and crispy. The snow fell overnight again, and most of the adults were in the fields bright and early, tending to the crops. Children were out in the field, playing. Sarah, the youngest, was twining a wreath out of early flowers. Micah and Jon were playing soldiers with guns made out of wood, and Alex was having a fight with Lucas.

They were the oldest of the children, a little more than a year away from coming into full work because neither showed much desire to continue studying any more than they had; they bickered over seniority all the time. Being fourteen to his thirteen, Alex rightfully counted herself the oldest. Being a May-born and just half a month later than her, just as rightfully, Lucas thought she was full of crap. And, rightfully or not, they both were under a firm impression that, their lives being intertwined as they were, they would some day get married.

That morning — Alex still remembers it as vivid as yesterday — they were preparing to race back to the outpost, shoving each other's shoulders to gain the advantage. She tried to trip him and he almost fell; and catching up to her he shoved her hard in the back with both hands.

"_See you on the finish line. Tommorow!"_ he shouted and laughed, sprinting further. It still rings in her ears whenever she thinks of that day.

She wanted to cry from the unfairness as she tried to get up from the mud, minding a scraped knee; she was still that age when she could be allowed the naivety of the impression that the world is just. Sniffing and wiping her nose, she got up and walked to the houses slowly, kicking the snow with the tips of her boots and skulking. A horn signaled for the settlement to gather, startling her, but she didn't quicken her step. Most of the times it meant a transmission for the Council of elders; and however old she thought herself to be, however adult it made her feel to be there with them, most of the times the plain business that was discussed there bored her. And moping as she were, all she wanted to do was nurse her wounded pride, not weasel her way into a dull meet.

She was still a child, more so in such a tight-knit community where everyone's a family and children are spoiled. She couldn't have known, couldn't have done anything. But even fifteen years later she wonders if anything would change if she ran faster that day. If she ran all the way after him. If they reached the settlement together.

Because the next time she saw Lucas, he was dead.

The horn was blaring an all new kind of emergency meeting — batarian slavers attacked the colony.

And the first shot she ever saw fired was for him.

She climbed over the fence where the sprouts crawled onto the plastic from the hedge nearby, creating a natural ladder. They always used it to go to the field, coming up with new exciting games each time: like they were exploring a new planet; or hunting wild varren on an uninhabited world and whoever reached the fence last was considered eaten; they were fearless soldiers of the First Contact War and daring space adventurers, they were black op commandos and Council Spectres. They were free, not a care in the world.

Coming back, Alex grabbed at the roots sprawled over the wall forcefully, venting her grievance at the plants. She was beginning to hear the commotion in the center of the settlement, someone shouting, seemingly with excitement (because why else would anyone shout in a Mindoir colony?), and thinking she was missing all the excitement because she lagged behind in her offence got Alex only more angry. Jumping down she landed on her hands and knees; shaking them off she hurried forward, putting the grudge behind herself, at least for now, curiosity overshadowing the hurt ego.

Emerging from the narrow paths between the compounds, she stopped dead, muscles locking in place in terror. Before her eyes there was chaos. Three men lay dead, weltering in their own gore; Alex knew them. Miles and Susan, an elderly couple who leaved down the block; Miles oversaw the irrigation and taught her a few things about the water system — he always said she had _quarian fingers_, the way she was good with tech; and Susan always treated her to home-made candy — now she lay with her apron thrown over her bloodied face. The third man was Karl, a young man, one of our security officers. He had a baton in his hand, its length covered with blood, still fresh and not crusted. His face was unmarked, they must have gotten him in the back or in the chest, not the head; his limbs were spread in awkward angles, like spider legs.

Other people were running about; children were wailing, abandoned, and, remotely, Alex wondered about those still in the field, who were hurrying to the inviting call of the sirens; running to their death. Some colonists were shooting; looking back Alex can remember that most of them were farmers who had grabbed the guns they used for hunting, no match to the raiders. Those were descending slowly, like a wall of sand that seeps down slow and unstoppable, devouring everything in its path.

Alex knew they were batarians: they showed them pictures of every alien in class. They seemed unattractive but fierce to her before. They were repulsive to her now. Their voices growly, almost gurgling, she couldn't understand a word they were saying. She just saw them march, unconcerned, safe from bullets. One of their leaders was issuing commands, ordering his people around, utterly calm, cold. They were confident. There was no stopping them.

Alex stared at all of this, her world crumbling.

Then she saw Lucas. He had made it, he just had to have won; now he was backing away from one of the buildings at gunpoint. He turned and ran. The batarian shot him in the back of the head and with a yelp the boy fell, his eyes dimming, like someone turned a switch in it. There was no slow transition, no prolonged moment where life left him drop by drop, while he had time to find Alex standing there with his yes one last time — _bang!_ and he was done, just like that. Alex wondered what his last thought was.

One of the aliens saw her then. Signaling two others, he went for her. Instincts overcame her petrified state, and Alex bolted, hearing his angry shout behind herself. There was no sense to her actions, only blind instinct to survive; legs carried her home. It was overrun. Wherever her parents were — dead, taken, hiding, looking for her, fighting — they weren't here.

Instead, a body was lying in front of the house, a body of a man she didn't know. His right arm was twisted under his belly and Alex saw he was holding a gun in his hand. A few feet away stood a batarian; he spotted her from the corner of his multitude of eyes, or maybe heard the noise she made. Alex didn't know the man who was dead at the steps of her home, never knew his name, or how he fit into their colony, why he chose to tie his lives with theirs. But at the moment he saved her life. As the batarian raised his arm with the gun — whatever their criteria for slaves, Alex wasn't it — and a second before his shot she jumped to the side, trying to get to the man's gun, snatching it out of his dead fingers.

The bullet hit her. Her world shattered in pain; she fell.

She's been shot afterwards many times. If there's any one thing she's learnt from that it's that you never grow accustomed to the pain of a bullet-wound. But as a child of fourteen it was unbearable. Agony flooded her, the world blurred in her vision as a red haze gauzed her eyes; in it Alex saw Miles and Susan, the stranger whose gun she tried to grab, her parents, everyone she loved, and Lucas, most of all.

She has seen his face always, ever since, each time she has been shot. She sees it now, as a bullet pierces her, right between the second and the third rib, going all the way through. Alex chokes with pain and presses her fingers to the bleeding gash, and before her swims the unforgiving vision of Lucas's dead eyes.

Blacking out from pain saved her that day; it was all the same to the batarian, he didn't need to check and just left her there. She came around when the raid was all but over. The stench of charred flesh and gutted intestines filled her nose. Alex, who had never knew those sensations, scarcely knew what it was save that it was putrid. Crawling up onto hands and knees she spewed up whatever it was she had had for breakfast. The muscles of her arms were shaking, and she almost fell back into her own bile.

That was when someone snatched her. Memory returned in a relentless surge, and Alex shrieked and fought and jerked every limb against the hands that were holding her. Someone was speaking into her ear, but she didn't process a word — not until she was twisted around and saw the Alliance uniform. The military had come, albeit too late for most of them, an in too small a number. It was the unit closest to the settlement and its garrison was scarce on men. They were mostly looking for survivors rather than trying to fight off the raiders.

Alex hates and loves them for that. They saved her life, for which she is eternally grateful. But it is not what she wanted from them then, and it's not what she would have done. She would have fought for every men, even alone, to the last drop of blood in her body. That's what made her into an N7-worthy soldier — her willingness to do what it takes. That it has been result of this raid is the most likely explanation; not that Alex is in need of her motivation being analyzed and explained. She's just this person: the one who fights to the last man and stops at nothing, and she isn't much liked for that, even in the military. But if she was the one in charge, she would have saved whomever was left at that settlement; and that's the kind of result that matters to her, not if she'd got a lot of friends afterwards.

The soldier who got her took her to their shuttle. A few other people were shivering there, their faces horrorstruck, tear-stained. The soldier gave the order to depart. That's when Alex saw her father. He was cradling his wife in his arms, who was staring upwards, into the skies, where the shuttle was; she was not blinking. He didn't see his daughter, and she shouted then, shouted for them to stop, to turn back, it was her father there, _My father, you have to go back, _**please**_!_

She almost jumped out of the open door — and with the height that the shuttle was already at the fall would have surely killed her. They held her down, the soldiers, and she fought against them again, twice as hard; she kicked and bit and screamed herself hoarse. Then she vomited again, onto the pants of one of them. He didn't care. He drew her into an embrace, wrapped her in blankets and put his arms around her and rocked her, just like her father had rocked her mother in his grief, and Alex shook and chattered, huddling and crying, tears just spilling over her face without her control. She was numb and sick and alone.

"Shepard," he whispered to her. The voice reached her as if through a thick layer of water. She barely heard it.

"Shepard…" No, that's not right. He didn't know her name. She knew his, though, — it was on his dog tags, she read it as she calmed down in his arms and was playing with the metal, catching light on the surface. _Officer Joshua Barnes_. He's dead now. Killed on duty several months afterwards. He had visited her every moment he could before that, to check on his little 'feral cat' as he'd called her. They tried lying to her when he stopped coming; she didn't believe them. She found out the truth on her own soon enough.

"Shepard!" This time the voice snaps her from her memory trance. She isn't sure how long she's just stood there, stunned. Seconds? Minutes? Hardly long, for they are under fire.

She's just been shot by the Warden running this freakshow. The memories of Mindoir has flooded her head, uninvited. They always do, which is why she tries to get shot as little as possible. Other kinds of trauma go over smoothly with her. Bullets, not so much.

"Shepard, don't just stand there like a pussy!" someone reproves her sharply. Jack, the trigger-happy cryo-girl. "We'll patch you up soon enough, we just need to get out of here. Don't go all 'helpless dead weight' on us!"

Jack has been aiding them the rest of the way to the shuttle bay, blasting through the remaining block like a freighter without brakes, flailing mercs and exploding mechs. Her biotics have boosted Saren's exhausted powers significantly, so he doesn't mind that much, even though she is another human.

But Kuril's been waiting for them at the shuttles, all powered up with three shield generators, untouchable and majestic to his mind. It's her own fault she got shot; she got reckless. She shoots down the generators, one by one, while Saren and Jack cover her, taking care of Kuril's mercs. She isn't paying attention when she shoots down the last one, and as the shield sphere falls the turian shoots her, having been expecting her to make exactly this mistake.

He manages to hit her into her left side too, the lucky bastard; it's her better one, she's sinistral. It decreases her value in combat a little more. Alex is a saboteur first, she's not the kind of soldier who rushes into the heat of the battle. Even as she's been given her own command, during her pursuit of Saren, tactically she is the one to stay in the back, picking out targets with her _Python_. With her clocking system broken, she's useless in a close combat. And with her balance thrown off by this shot, no way she'll be able to aim with a pistol.

"Just forget the gun," Jack is not eager to have her slow them down either. "Can you get us a ride?"

Alex smiles despite the pain. "Yeah…" Countless covert operations come to mind from the time she's been earning the N7 rank, where they had to hitch a ride to safety on the enemy vehicle. She could get them a _Gyrfalcon_ in no time.

She turns to the shuttles, canvasing the field and plotting the course for her to make rushes, from cover to cover. But as she's prepared to go for it, Saren catches her arm and glares at her, silent, meaningful. The words he wishes to say hang between them, unpronounced but painfully clear. It would have been humiliating for him to utter them so he holds back, but he knows it and knows that she knows it, and it still infuriates him. He was about to tell her to not even think of leaving them behind. Leaving _**him**_ behind. It's demeaning, but he was.

Alex is not the kind of person to do so. Not to save herself, that is: she has left people behind plenty. Mindoir stunned her for life from feeling dejection over lost friends, though a few N-Units comrades that she was not allowed to return for still hurt. After Torfan she no longer cared. The only loss that has touched her since then was Virmire, a painful necessity and, coincidentally, Saren's fault. But that wasn't her trying to save her own ass; all of that was her making hard decisions for the good of the many. _For the cause._ Saren has read her dossier back when he had his Spectre status. He has to know the difference. But maybe he doesn't.

Still, as she shakes his grip off of herself, moments later, just as silent, there is an understanding between them. He reads it in her eyes, in her body language and knows that she is for real — she'll keep him alive just to extract her perverse vengeful justice over him. If he can't trust her, he can trust that.

She can't quite remember how she gets to her destination. It was a high-velocity round that went through her, so she's losing a lot of blood, a thin red trickle running steadily and forcefully through the fingers she's pressing to her side. At times her vision seems to black out, at times her brain. She reaches the shuttle on auto-pilot. But it's always been part of her job requirement, to do things like hijacking vehicles. She can override the controls to the Gyrfalcon in her sleep. Presently, she's proving how literal this saying goes.

"Come on!" she shouts, as the door to it opens. Or maybe she only thinks she shouts, but she's really silent. Maybe she thinks she shouts, but wheezes it out and they can't hear her.

Whether or not it is so doesn't matter — they see that she's done the job and start retreating slowly. Alex stumbles into the vehicle blindly, the pain becoming staggering. She's looking for something but can't recall what until she sees it. The arsenal compartment. With shaking hands, one of them slick with blood, she opens the locker and grabs the sniper rifle.

It's an unfamiliar model, turian made. Alex almost drops it as she feels the full weight of it. Her left side can't support it at all. But she takes charge of it, and, swaying as if the shuttle's moving already, she reels towards the door, kneels inelegantly and takes aim.

"What are you doing, Shepard?" Jack barks at her, as she slips into the shuttle, bullets following her. "Get this bird moving."

Alex doesn't hear her. There's only so much information a dizzy mind can process on the verge of losing consciousness. She presses the trigger, as the scope finds its target — the Warden. The weapon waits, trembling; this is the model that fires only as you let go.

"Get out of there!" Jack shouts. Saren's standing beside her now. Alex doesn't remember how he got there. "One caught bullet ain't enough for you?"

She doesn't respond, and they don't bother, hurrying to flee before Kuril's mercs shoot the shuttle down on takeoff. One of them starts the vehicle up just as Alex releases the trigger. She yelps, and hits the trigger again, unsure if the first one got skewed too much.

The military calls it "doubleshot". Infiltration units love it, since it means they're able to make two shots before they have to relocate, the cloaking system dispersing. She was right, too, only the second shot makes it. She doesn't care, she needed only the one; the bullet hits Kuril between the teeth and goes right through his head, propelling through the brain matter and skull to finally be lodged in into a wall. He's dead the minute it passes through his palate. He's dead even as Alex presses the trigger for the second time at takeoff, and he doesn't even know it.

"You crazy bitch!" Jack yanks her out of the way of other bullets and closes the door. But they all saw what she did. "Was it worth it?"

Alex smiles, sliding down the wall, letting the weapon clatter to the floor. "Always is."

"'S there a med-kit here, or something?" Jack asks sharply, watching the blood drip from her wound onto the floor.

"A turian one," Saren responds. "It's a turian shuttle." Alex can't discern his tone: is he amused? Happy? Most likely, indifferent. "It will do her no good." He's sitting in the pilot seat, she realizes, even though there's no need. The ship would know the route better.

"Just medi-gel then," Jack snaps. "We don't need her to look pretty — we need her to stay alive."

If Saren has anything to object to that, he doesn't. Jack salvages some medi-gel from the first-aid station and takes Alex's jacket off, revealing a bloodied tanktop. Yanking the red-soaked edge up, she applies the gel and covers it with a crude bandage that would hold out for a few hours. That's the only thing she can do: Saren is right, all the other meds are dextro-amino — coagulants, disinfection, even painkillers. The food, too, and they're in dire need of fuelling their organisms. Luck, it seems, smiles ypon Saren and not her at this instance.

Still, without the bloodrush coming from her head and into her ribcage, Alex feels better, clearer. A few hours she can muster.

"We need to take her to a hospital," Jack mutters. Saren is silent; Alex doesn't need to be psychic to know how much they disagree on that. He doesn't care about her bulletwound — he's out of captivity, there are endless roads for him to choose and start running. If she doesn't succeed in bringing him in, he'll be a fugitive, and he isn't opposed to that. She grinds her teeth together.

Jack doesn't know any of that; they hardly had times for introductions. Just an exchange of names, and a few quips as they were trying to get to the evac area. She's been in the cryo for way too long, almost a year; she has no idea who either of them is, or that she has managed to miss a short-fused war. And the two greatest players in that war, on the opposite sides of the board, too, are now in the same shuttle with her, one planning an escape and the other trying to come up with a way to not let him.

When she set him free, she wanted to preserve him long enough for him to face justice. She's in no condition to dictate terms anymore, she's weaker than he is and he's been refusing to eat and exhausting himself for a week. He isn't anymore. And if she'll be of an inadvertent help in granting him his undeserved freedom… she won't ever forgive herself.

"There's… an auto-pilot function," she says, more for Jack's benefit, relying on her to be her unwitting assistant. "It will compute our location and deliver to the closest habituated destination." She points her to the switches.

Saren's mandibles flare as Jack intervenes, but he doesn't object, trying to work around it in his mind, no doubt. He doesn't want to rouse needless tension, to explain too much to the human. It's a subtle tug-of-war they're playing, Alex and he, and whoever will be more resourceful, more cunning, will get their ticket out, and the other will get the short straw. She's hoping it will be him, again.

She isn't sure this time she'll be that lucky.

* * *

"Fucking great," Jack growls. "There are three places you don't want to be crashlanding on. One, an uninhabited planet — 'cause no one will even know you're there, and you'll either die from starvation or, if the food's compatible with you, you'll go insane in solitude. Two, Khar'shan — because fucking batarians! Crashing on their homeworld is like for a wounded duck to sit in front of a lion to take a break — free slaves, falling from the skies! Must be early Christmas!"

"And three?" Alex grunts, just to keep her talking — anything to keep her own mind from the blazing wound in her ribs.

"Three is here, dumbass!" the girls exclaims angrily. "_Let's have an automated pilot choose the closest port,_" she says in a mocking voice, sliding under Alex's shoulder and allowing her to lean on her. "Yeah, great plan! Crashing in Omega slums after escaping a space prison. Gotta be the biggest fucking irony there is. 'Cause if the mercs will see three unarmed 'guests' here — they kill us. If a pack of vorcha see someone they outnumber — they kill us. If rabid clanless vagrant Pilgrimage-failing quarians see three people worth of salvage — even they kill us! And since we have a member of Alliance with us, shot and bleeding, and we're in the freaking heart of the Terminus — we pretty much have the bull's eye on us from everyone else I might have forgotten to mention."

"You ever shut up?" Saren snaps at her.

"Hey, fuck you! I have spent several months in cryo — I'm starved for talking so I can fucking talk all I want!" Jack fumes.

Fact is, their shuttle has been shot down. Seemed to have been mercs; Omega doesn't have any government or military forces for it to have been them. As far as Alex knows, mercs run this place. And now they are on their trail, hunting them down. And they aren't even sure where they're heading.

For a time no one challenges their path. They are in the slums, largely uninhabited and lawless. They press forward as fast as her injury allows them. Separating would be a certain death, which is why the turian's still with them, Alex assumes. Still, she has to wonder at Jack who seems to not have thought about leaving her behind, not once. They have met only few hours back, and the biotic owes her nothing; she could have ditched her and gone faster along with Saren. Alex doubts she's being dragged along just to add to their number, but she can't quite figure the convict out. In the end, all she can do is trust them too. And it's one of those 'if-anyone-told-me-yesterday…' cases: because if anyone told her she'd be wounded, in the company of two escaped prisoners, one of them hers, both possible mentally unstable, and she had to trust them with her life as she used to trust her N-Unit compatriots… Maybe she fits right in with these two, under the mentally unstable category.

She tries not to slow them down, fighting through the pain as best as she can. It's not the first time she has to travel wounded, and it's not the first time the circumstances urge her on to move with speed. All they need is to find a more crowded plaza, even a half-civilized district, merely one where they won't be shot down for sport. Jack wants to find a hospital for Alex… Alex herself doesn't know what she wants. She dreads the moment they'll reach safety. It means her prisoner, the tyrant who would condemn them all, will leave unpunished, and, wounded as she is, she won't be able to stop him.

Wrapped up in thoughts, she doesn't notice when the noise of Omega, the gust of ventilation system, the rumbling of engines, changes, an underlining clatter rising and coming closer. Saren hears them instead. He stops and throws his head back in alarm, gaze sweeping our surroundings. They follow his stare, but there's no one to see, not yet.

"They're coming," he announces gravely.

Alex twists from Jack's supportive grip, leaning against the wall instead, and turns around too. "How many?"

The question surprises him; at least that's what she thinks this particular twitch of the mandibles means. "I don't know. Eight maybe. Not a big group." But his eyes are grim. She's wounded, and they're all exhausted. Eight is more than enough…

"We won't outrun them," he concludes. "We'll have to make a stand."

"Where?" Jack snaps. "It's a killzone, there's nowhere they can't follow us."

Saren points to an ugly mold of metal a few meters further. It has been a stack of containers at one point, but has been melted by a fire into a monstrous massif that can appear to provide a lot of cover, unless you have been part of infiltration units, like Alex has.

"No," she argues, wiping sweat from her pallid face. The turian glares, his dead mechanic eyes set on her defiantly. "It's a bad spot. The block up there is unsteady — a few blows from heavy weapons, and the construction will topple, either leaving us defenseless, or trapping us. Besides, there's an opening there," she points to a narrow passage the turian has either missed or dismissed. "It's hard to maneuver, but they outnumber us, so while some will keep pressure from one side, the others will certainly try to circle around us, to flank us, and generally meet us head-on. We can't afford a close quarter combat."

She understands why he's chosen it, though. If either he or Jack were in a better condition, it's great for a biotic squad. But presently, for them it's suicide. She knows it the same way she sees the best sniper's post in the area. But they left the turian rifle at the crash site, because she can't lift it anyway. Circumstances are everything; and preferences be damned, but their prerogative is to survive. And it's her job, after all, to analyze and the battlefield.

Instead, she points behind them, to another place. It's not ideal either, they'll have to go back towards the party of mercs, not away, and it has a few disadvantages, but between the three of them they might be able to work around that. It is a zone tightly pressed into the corner, where containers form an L-shaped barricade that will protect them from every angle she can think of, even the upper ones.

There are thin metal plates littered all over the floor. Someone must have tried to build something here, but the project was abandoned without looking back, instruments, materials, wares, all just discarded here. What's left is not all unsalvageable, but other than quarians no one will want it: Omega may be unbridled and disordered, but it's not cheap and it has its pride.

Saren picks one of the leaves up, the metal bending with quiet wail. It seems to be tungsten-based alloy. "Take this," he throws the plate at Alex. "Shield yourself as best you may." She catches it and stares at him, surprised. She doesn't understand how he views her, what he sees in her; definitely not why he'd care to make any suggestion for her defense whatsoever.

He has got it almost exactly right; there were nine of them. A scout group, or maybe a patrol, all dressed in yellow of Eclipse, unsubtle color, irritating to the eye. And they are not incapable: if they haven't been tracking them specifically, they have certainly seen them in advance. Before Alex sees the mercs themselves, a missile is launched at their cover.

The blast makes the whole corner shudder, but it holds. They exchanging brief glances with the turian: if they had taken cover anywhere else, they would have been blown to hell. She's sure he hates to be grateful for her insight.

She starts fiddling with her omni-tool manically, trying to make it do something useful; an incinerating blast would be so helpful right now. She doesn't think she can get it into a working order good enough for a convincing decoy, and repairing the intricate cloaking system is far beyond her set of engineering skills.

As the others are still trying to keep the mercs at bay, she breaks the lock from one of the _, and pulls free a handful of wires. Disengaging some of them, she start linking the omni-tool to this remote part of the system, hoping to revive at least something.

The flashlight turns on, blinding her, as if someone's laughing at her. "Come on, you stupid piece of shit!" she growls, turning the lamp off and tweaking several more wires. White noise starts coming in, as the comm system powers back online. A hopeful idea forming in Alex's mind, she concentrates on the system uplink and the video feed, until the holographic interfaces starts showing in a half-ass decent way.

"Come on, come on," she keeps muttering, diving fully into the system and trying to find something, a layout, a backdoor that will at least let them get away.

"Anything?" Jack demands.

"There are…" Alex hits the device, as if it will help to clear the white noise, "…service tunnels, abandoned. Through there," she point to the direction slightly to the north of where they were heading. "If we can reach them, we can block the path behind ourselves."

"Well, we _**can't**_ reach there," the turian snaps impatiently. "We're blocked, and neither of us can outrun the bullets."

"We need is a diversion…" Alex looks at the barricade hopelessly: she's been trained for exactly this — subterfuge, manipulating the field. But she sees nothing that would help their cause. "Can't you pull 'em up with your biotics?"

"Not with that armor — they're too heavily reinforced. Each merc's like a miniature YMIR." He scowls derisively, like even stooping down to explaining this pains him.

"Damn it," she grunts, leaning against the crates. Jack was right: it has been from smoke into smother for them; not a few hours has passed since they fled Purgatory, and here they are in the same foxhole, being shot at by the mercs again. Only difference is it's a different gang this time, and there are no cryogenic containers to release an angerball of fury from.

Suddenly there is a pop, a distinctive sound of a bubble bursting, its sound thick, like it's coming underwater — the sound of a biotic detonation. And it's followed by a crash of some sort, and the mercs are stumbling backwards from the source of the sound.

Exchanging startled glances, they dare to glance at the battlefield again. A blue sphere crosses the air like a shooting star and slams into several mercs — bit it's not a warp field, or a singularity vortex. It's a bag of cluster grenades. …three, two, one, and _bam_, with a flash and a pop it explodes. And the mysterious stranger who presumably has decided to assist them follows out of his hiding spot.

He's coming from the second storey, rushing upon them like a leopard, and lands on his feet and one palm with exactly cat-like grace. _Pop, pop,_ and two more grenades fall into the midst of the mercs with skillful precision. Most are left suspended in the air, while the others have forgotten their targets and are trying to help. Several have been thrown head-on into walls and are of no help at all.

The stranger turns to them and dashes to their side. He's a drell, which surprises them even more than his timely arrival. "Come with me, quick," he demands, grabbing Alex's hand and pulling her up, gesturing for others to follow too. "We don't have much time before they recover."

"Who are you?" Saren demands. The drell doesn't respond and doesn't let go of Alex's hand. And you don't look a gift varren in the mouth: they have been asking for a diversion, and here he is. Trouble is, he's confusing even them.

They follow him without arguing. He leads them into the same tunnels Alex has discovered; she takes small comfort in that. After that it's like a run through a nightmare, with him navigating the dark empty maze, until they reach a ladder, going to the level above them.

"Up the steps," the drell commands. "They won't be looking for us there."

"And who's waiting for us there?" the turian demands mistrustfully.

The drell regards him with amusement, appearing to be entertained that they think it's an elaborate trap. Silently, he just points his forefinger upward and nods, nudging them to climb.

Half-heartedly, they do. It is not a trap.

They are in an empty plaza, abandoned by the looks of it, or victim to a recent skirmish; the lights are flickering, several searchlights are shot blind, the containers are keeled over, the wires slithering on the floor are torn and bursting sparkles.

"Where are we?" Alex looks around, licking her parched lips, trying not to give into dizziness. She wonders if the wound's got infected, if she's running a fever.

"Nobu District," he says, looking around pleased, like he owns it. Which tells them next to nothing.

"And who exactly are you?" Saren demands, mass effect energy oozing about his arm.

"The drell who saved your life," he turned to face him, unafraid, "so why don't you show me some gratitude."

"You don't show gratitude before suspicion when you're us," Saren says maliciously.

"No," the drell is unperturbed, "I imagine Shepard and Saren would want a little anonymity. They are a lot of people hunting for you, and those mercs are the least of your problem." He says it with a faint grin and stunning lack of concern. Saren bristles, his biotic flaring up.

"What's wrong with them?" Jack narrows her eyes at her companions with caution.

The drell laughs quietly. "Oh, you poor dear, you don't even know what you got yourself into. This guy is the galaxy's Undesirable number One," he points at the turian, then at Alex, "and she was tasked with bringing him back. Isn't going well, is it?"

Alex grits her teeth, wondering if the drell is that careless about everything, or if he's touched in the head. And whatever the case, he's the one who got them here and the only one who can get them out. She hates him for it a little.

Then she sees a public terminal. Nudging Jack with an elbow she point to it and starts staggering towards.

"Hey now," the drell stops her, laying his fingers on her elbow. "What are you doing? I can get you where you want."

"And what's in it for you?" Saren demands.

He smiles in a clandestine manner. "Then I get you where I want," he says unforthcomingly. "There are people who want to meet you. I am but a bearer of their invitation."

"She needs a fucking doctor," Jack speaks first; she and Saren spend too much time worrying about who holds the leash of this guy, and how many strings are attached to his helping hand.

"I can see that," he nods with the same simple smile. "That's why I brought you here; he's just further along," he nods to the passage behind himself, incidentally away from the terminal. And Alex doesn't trust him.

"You're in luck, too, Omega has never been big on clinics. It's a new addition, barely a month old." He starts walking in that direction.

Alex remains still. "I want to check first," she grunts and continues to the terminal decidedly. He blinks, his face falling a little, but then shrugs and follows her, his shoulders slumped.

"As you wish. This district is empty, it's probably out of service, anyway," he mumbles.

"I just like to know the way. Call it a quirk," Alex smiles wryly at him. He mirrors it, both of them knowing that with her credentials quirks are the last thing on her mind.

"Are you gonna tell us your name, anyway, or are we to call you 'Hey, drell'?" Jack intervenes sullenly. There's a look about her; she wants to know the truth, to know their history. But she's biding her time for now.

"As you wish," he repeats distractedly, as Alex stops by the terminal. It's almost out of service, and it takes her a few minutes to fire it up. She prays that it was online when the last update to the system was made. He tries to peek around her shoulder, as the display comes alive, but Saren slides in front of him, blocking his view. He's not about to trust a stranger either.

Alex accesses the search engine then, typing in 'omega, clinic'. The first few hits are private doctors with shady credentials who reside here, but then she sees it: _'Free all-species clinic in Gozu district'_. Finally, one piece of luck.

"Huh," she says aloud. "You're right, it must have been off-line during latest uploads. There are no info, all entries are pretty old. I'm gonna bring up the map. Where do you say it is?" As she throws a glance behind her shoulder, she sees Saren looking at the display too, unblinking.

"Er, Kenzo district, just past the Nobu."

Alex's heart sinks as she shifts her gaze to look at Saren. It's never a good feeling when your mistrust is proven right, but it's the one they are both familiar with. At this moment, they are allies again, no longer concerned by labels of 'Spectres' and 'criminals'. They just want to know who is laying the trap for them.

"You sure?" Alex asks again, turning the display off. The drell looks at it with worry as they step away, then at their faces searchingly.

"Pretty darn," he responds carefully. Alex smiles at him, putting him at ease, and extends her arm for him to take as he did before. As soon as she does she yanks him onto herself and grabs the pistol from his holster, then shoves him away, aiming the gun at him.

Saren stands by her side, one arm glowing blue, the other gripping the pistol they've taken from the armory of _Gyrfalcon_. The drell doesn't need to know there are only two clips inside, and that Saren is so weak at this point his biotics couldn't lift a kitten.

"You're lying," Alex's voice is low, trembling. "I hate liars. I shoot liars in their stinking lying faces. Who are you working for?"

"Yeah, fucker!" Jack completes their battleline, stepping forward. "Answer her!"

"Now, now, let's not do anything we're gonna regret," the drell raises his hands placatingly and starts moving away.

"I regretted killing a garrison of people under my command," Alex snorts. "I'm not gonna regret one drell." He gulps, realizing that he's not about to weasel his way out of this that easily. "Start talking!" she demands.

"Who are you?" Saren repeats the question of before.

The drell inclines his head and steps further away, remaining silent. For all his cockiness he at least knows how to remain tight-lipped.

"Who are you?!" Alex repeats, losing patience.

"_Feron, you bastard!"_

A female voice cleaves through the air from behind them, and Alex can't help it; she looks away. So does Saren. It is but a fraction of a moment, but it is enough for the limber drell. As the newly arrived woman fires her biotics at him, he throws two grenades, one at his two targets, one at his pursuer. They dash away, not to get caught in the blasts, and as they do that, he's gone.

"So sorry," his laugh rolls over them like a wave. "You almost got me."

"And I will!" the woman shouts back.

"You tell yourself that… you were always a sour loser…" the voice is distant, moving away, and they don't doubt the drell is gone.

With a snarl Saren gets up on his feet, taking out his fire on the nearest container, pushing it down and tearing his claws into it. Alex watches him with a blank expression; this is more like the turian she used to hunt. It reminds her of all the reasons she wants him put away: even without the Sovereign, he's indescribably dangerous.

Then she turns to look at the woman. She's a slender girl, dressed in a catsuit, looking more like an asari than any soldier Alex knows. She's dazzlingly beautiful too, and for a moment Alex thinks she might be cybernetic. But turian sense of scent is not deceived by artificial skin.

"Another human," he mutters through clenched teeth. "We had enough benevolent assistant for one day, so speak quick," he demands. There's a ring of former authority in his voice, of a Spectre general who has commanded others for two decades.

The woman regards him angrily and puts her gun away. "My name is Miranda Lawson," she says. "I was trying to get to you before this guy, he snatched you right from under my nose." Her lips twist unattractively in anger.

"Who is he, and who are you?" Alex prompts. They do not need personal facts, only tangible truths.

"His name is Feron," the woman replies with a sigh, still catching her breath. "He used to work with me, a freelancer. But he betrayed us and now works for another."

"Who?" Saren repeats impatiently.

"The Shadow Broker."

They exchange glances again. It is a name they're both familiar with: he was the one to set Alex on the turian's trail, after Saren had betrayed him. Their cooperation was short-lived, and they didn't part on friendly terms, too. But vengeance seems unlike something a man whose empire is built on information would want. Doesn't attract clientele.

"What does he want with us?" Alex demands.

"What he always wants," Miranda shrugs. "Information." She anticipates their next question and says softly, "You're both extremely valuable now to anyone who can get you. You both, in your unique ways, have interacted with a Reaper."

A slither of slick clod runs up Alex's back, like a tongue of death.

"What do you know about Reapers?" Saren asks darkly.

"A lot more than the general public, I'm sure," Miranda chuckles sarcastically.

"What's a Reaper?" Jack interrupts. Her question is left unanswered.

"Too long to explain," Alex mutters. "Later, Jack." She looks at Miranda. "So, the Broker wants us. Who else? Who are your bosses?"

"As far as I know, the Broker merely has another buyer. We don't know who it is, there hasn't been much time for intelligence gathering. Perhaps the same people who commissioned you to Warden Kuril." She smiles a little as they startle. "Yes, I know about that too. The Hierarchy is on their way to sweep Purgatory under the rug, but they weren't the only one. Feron was. So was I." She pauses briefly, looking them over. "I can't tell you who I work for, it's not a simple answer. I can only say that we want to stop the Reapers and we know you do too. And so far we're the only people who give a damn."

She falls silent then, giving them time to think. Alex knows that a part of her is desperately curious about her offer, and desires vehemently to prepare for a battle with the likes of Sovereign. Saren, though, is another matter. Offering him to start from a clean slate, to atone, it's not how the galaxy works, not how the law works. He has been indoctrinated, almost insane, and with Sovereign's effect or without, he has always operated ruthlessly. And he needs to answer for that.

She looks at him and can't say what he's contemplating. But the consequences of this offer worry her.

Jack interrupts the silence first, not happy to be left out of the loop. "What if you, like, staged this all? Hired him to mislead us so we'd trust you!" she looks at Miranda accusingly. The woman looks at her with a bemused expression, like such nonsense couldn't even occur to her. Then her expression turns to one of scorn.

"I know who you are," she drawls, looking down at Jack as if she's a fly to be crushed. "Jack, is it? Easy to remember, just like your original number, _Subject Zero._"

Jack snarls, pulling out her pistol. "Only one kind of people in this world who call me that. _**Cerberus.**_"

Miranda doesn't refute the claim, looking at the feral biotic calmly. "Put the gun down before you hurt yourself."

"Cerberus?" Alex grabs for a gun too, and Miranda's face colors with slight concern, as Jack aims hers with more resolve, having backup. "You're with _**Cerberus**_?"

They all look at Saren, rather comically, expecting him to take some stance too, but the turian remains indifferent. "I have no idea what a Cerberus is."

Miranda steps to him eagerly the very instant he admits it. "We are the people willing to help a person like Saren Arterius."

"Don't fucking listen to her bullshit," Jack objects. "Cerberus has raised me, trying to make an all-powerful biotic, drugging kids, making us do some sick shit. They are fucking crazy."

Alex looks at the girl closely and grits her teeth tightly, sensing a story far worse behind the short remark. She vividly remembers Admiral Kahoku's body, needlemarks along his arms and neck. She can very well imagine a Cerberus facility doing exactly what Jack recounts.

"Plainly said," she says aloud, "they are terrorists. And their goal is to promote humanity's superiority over other species. In a manner that makes even humans hate them. I hardly think she can offer you any help. _Turian_." She has taken to calling him that; the impersonality of it seems to offend him a great deal.

He ignores it this time, focusing all his attention on Miranda. It is not the kind of attention you want to be a focus of. "Sorry," is the only thing he offers the woman, motioning for Jack or Alex to finish her. Forgetting again he's not in charge, Alex muses darkly.

"These are mere preconceptions," Miranda speaks stubbornly, and Alex has got to hand it to her — she keeps her cool, not appearing afraid even for a second. The three of them pause, listening in spite of themselves. "Goals may change. We do not want other races holding us back and preach the advancement of humanity, that is true — and I realize it's not a great selling point with you," she looks at Saren honestly, "but it is what it is. We are not above stooping to questionable methods either, _**but**_," she holds a pause looking them over, "I daresay neither are any of you. You all know your deeds, I need not to recount them. But we do not allow speciesm. And we are not above offering help to a Spectre gone rogue who has suffered from indoctrination," she looks at Saren, "when he has nowhere else to turn but _Incarceron_ or death. We will give you a ship based of turian designs, give you a free pass to recruit any kind of a crew you'd wish, with a few suggestions, if you help us."

"With what?" he asks angrily, not buying her too-good-too-be-true saleswoman speech for a second.

Alex thinks he hardly likes being cornered like this: a choice between prison, death or Cerberus is an obvious one, and he's considering her offer, but it's still _**no**_ choice.

"Why would you need his help?" she demands as well.

"Ah," Miranda smiles. "Because, most importantly, the Council has hurried along, sure that by tonight _Incarceron_ would have one more inmate, and issued a statement that you haven't heard." Her voice becomes saccharine, but her smile is sharp as a dagger. "The statement that renounces any public statements Commander Shepard has issued about the Reaper threat as invalidated, declaring her possibly suffering from hysteria in lieu of the Battle of the Citadel."

Alex's face grows long, which makes even Jack snort. "Now who's crazy, bitch," she chuckles.

"They have said it before, you shouldn't be surprised," Miranda shrugs. "Calling Sovereign a 'flagship' of their rogue Spectre? Saying the geth has followed his charisma and his lies? They want to hide their heads in the sand and pretend nothing is happening, and the big bad boogyman will disappear with the rays of morning sun. But we know it isn't going to happen," she looks at both Saren and Alex. "And Cerberus will not let the matter lie. _**That's**_ what we need your help with — _**both**_ of yours. We are rousing forces against the Reaper threat. Studying every piece of tech and intel we can out our hands on. And you, with your knowledge of interacting with Sovereign first-hand, would be our greatest assets."

She knows that Saren has no other choice but to accept — her offer is his best prospect. Yet she is courteous enough to let it seems as if he is choosing — which is what gains her his agreement, she presumes. Reapers, resources, clean slate guilt-free, and a job worthy of a Spectre.

She can't let that happen.

* * *

There are circumstances when you have to adapt to a situation you don't like.

There are also circumstances when the situation is so far out of the realm you have ever considered possible you don't know what to decide.

Saren has served the Council and the Hierarchy for most of his life. The year Shepard was born he already enlisted; he fought in the Relay 314 Incident; at the age of twenty he has become the agent of the Council's will and for twenty four years he has served as their shadow hand, one of the strongest ones. And then in one single moment it became a lie. He thought the device that can control the geth would avenge his brother and honor his memory. Instead it turned out to be the galaxy's demise, and for twenty years his mind decayed in the trap of an eternal supreme being.

When they tell you afterwards that you'll rot in a cell for the rest of your life, you don't exactly care. You are given one life and you've wasted it, so utterly. No good deed of his will ever outshine his servitude to Sovereign. He has made some hard choices in his life and has never regretted one of them, because the results mattered most to him than a few lives; it is something he has learnt from the asari who always say that it's the eternity of time that matters. Yet now he is forced to regret two decades of choices…

But this past twenty hours have reminded him in bursts of adrenaline and smell of gore that he is alive, even if his soul is noxious. He has stumbled through them, purposeless. The animal in him has fought for survival, but the turian in him knew he could have no life. No one on Palaven will listen to him, they are the one who want him put away the most. Yet his mind is alive, virulent with thought, and incarceration scares him the most.

So coming through the day's ordeal to face this arrogant human and her offer seems like a light at the end of a tunnel. He will listen to her. He has scarcely else to do.

"I'll go with you," he says gravely. He isn't sure it's the right choice, he isn't sure he should be afforded one, so he comes to the decision with a heavy heart. He's not the only one with such doubts.

"No!" Shepard points her gun at him in an instant. "You are not going anywhere with her."

Saren stares at her, unconcerned. He is endlessly tired, his thoughts heavy and dull. A part of him just wants to sleep and never wake up; a coward's way out. "I am not going with you, either. I refuse to be locked up because you deem it a worthy punishment."

"I won't let you get away that easy, not after all that," her vivid green eyes peer at him unblinkingly. There are all kinds of accusations in them, none light, and none new. She wants the same from him, as everybody else; restitution for the wound he has inflicted upon the galaxy. It is something he cannot give, neither to others, nor to himself.

"And how are you going to stop me?" he scoffs. "After 'all that' letting me go is all you're able to do: you're wounded and you're alone. You're outmatched."

"I'll take my chances," the girl mutters through gritted teeth, irritatingly stubborn as always. Saren growls and lifts a biotic-lit fist.

"Walk away," he warns.

"No." Shepard reloads her pistol, letting a half empty-clip fall and readying a fully packed one.

Saren hesitates. It occurs to him, surprisingly, that deep inside he has expected to break free of her, and that Shepard would always be there, on the other end of the barricade, hunting him. He wonders if that's why she hasn't had the heart to kill him either.

"Oh, for Christ's sake," Miranda rolls her eyes, and then slams a biotic throw into Shepard impatiently, catching her off guard. It's not nearly as powerful as Jack's biotics, but pretty good for a human.

Shepard stumbles back a few feet, and with another push and pull Miranda traps her in the cable cords lying on the floor.

"I'm sorry, Commander," she says with no inflection, apologetic or other kind. "I really hoped that it wouldn't come to this, but I cannot let you interfere with our plans either. Maybe you'll change your mind in the future."

Shepard stares at her with scorching fury, and then flicks open her omni-tool — he has forgotten she has restored some power into it — and cuts through the knot of cords holding her leg. Fire and sparks burst in a startling flare as she frees herself and grabs the gun again. "Not so fast, Cerberus."

Before she can react, Saren backhands her with his healthy arm across the temple, having made up his mind. Shepard falls on the ground, unconscious. Staring at her limp body he contemplates if killing her will ease the burden on his conscience, or make it worse. It feels like she's choking him, clenching her fingers around his throat. Hr wants to kill her and prove her right. He wants to atone and do right by his brother, and prove himself right more, and somehow not killing her falls on that side of the scales.

Miranda echoes his decision. "Leave her. She has battled Sovereign consciousness and won. We need her."

"She disagrees," Jack scoffs.

"We'll be more persuasive next time," Cerberus agent turns away.

"You know, I can't tell if you mean Cerberus, or you're just that much of a bitch to refer to yourself in plural," Jack folds her arms on her chest with a sneer.

"We should go," Miranda ignores her completely again.

"I ain't going anywhere with you, I wanna break your fucking chicken neck."

Miranda looks her over with amusement, confident of her own infallibility. "You can come too," she shrugs. "You could do something useful with the biotics we gave you for a change."

Saren ceases to listen. He cares little for the convict girl, even though she helped him. He thinks she'll leave, although human logic finds new ways to surprise him, still; one of the reasons he resents them so much, he supposes.

He wonders about this Cerberus and how much he will pay for their clemency. He doesn't believe in forgiveness freely given. He isn't sure he wants it, free or not, either way. He has never taken pity, not from anyone; he has never shown it either. And even now he's still too proud to accept it.

He wonders, too, what will happen if they get Shepard on their side after all. Fighting abreast with her instead of against her is nothing he can imagine. He wonders if they'll convince her to show him mercy too. And what ever will he do with it, were she to offer.


End file.
